Park, PA -- "Times of Sorrow and Hope: Documenting Everyday Life in Pennsylvania During the Depression and World War II, A Photographic Record," a traveling exhibit, is on display in the University Libraries main exhibit area, Pattee Library, June 9–August 15, 2003. "The Works Progress Administration Era and the American Image," an exhibit of related materials by the Penn State University Press will be on display in the Diversity Studies Room, 109 Pattee Library, during the same time period.

Between 1935 and 1946, a group of photographers working for the federal government fanned out across the country to record American life in pictures. Among them were some of the great documentary photographers in American history-including Marjory Collins, Jack Delano, Sheldon Dick, Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Ben Shahn, and Marion Post Wolcott.

This massive photographic project, carried out primarily under the auspices of the Farm Security Administration (FSA) and the Office of War Information (OWI) and later preserved at the Library of Congress, was unrivaled in scope: no comparable attempt to document life in this country has ever been made.

The exhibit was created from images from the book, Times of Sorrow and Hope: Documenting Everyday Life in Pennsylvania During the Depression and World War II, A Photographic Record, by Allen Cohen and Ronald L. Filippelli, with a foreword by Miles Orvell and published by the Penn State University Press—A Keystone Book. It is devoted to the Pennsylvania photographs in the FSA-OWI collection and has also been developed into an online database of photographs.

The exhibition features images selected from the approximately 6,000 Pennsylvania photographs, and they cover themes ranging from coal mining, steelworkers, and women in wartime industries to cities and small towns, farm life, and family life.

Cohen is a retired librarian from the University of California, Santa Barbara, a bibliographer, and a film historian whose most recent book is a co-authored work, John Huston: A Guide to References and Resources (1997).

Filippelli is professor of Labor Studies and Industrial Relations as well as the associate dean for Administration and Undergraduate Studies in the College of the Liberal Arts at Penn State. His most recent book is a co-authored work, Cold War in the Working Class: The Rise and Decline of the United Electrical Workers (1995), and he has been a frequent reviewer for The International Journal of the History of Photography.

Times of Sorrow and Hope provides a unique, comprehensive visual record of Pennsylvania history as the state struggled through one of its darkest periods and confronted new economic, political, and social challenges. For more information, contact Susan Shoup at srs200@psu.edu or 814-863-0524.

The public is invited to join Ronald L. Filippelli for brief remarks and a book signing on Monday, July 14, 2003, at 4:30 p.m., in the Foster Auditorium, 101 Pattee Library. For more information, call 814-865-2258.

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Editor's Contact:
Catherine Grigor, 814-865-0401