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During the Great Depression, the US government used photography to document rural poverty.
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President Franklin Delano Roosevelt created the Resettlement Administration, later called the Farm Security Administration, to combat rural poverty, notably by hiring artists to document its effects and galvanize public support for efforts to reduce it.
Columbia professor Roy Stryker assembled a team of American photographers, including Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans, who would inspire empathy.
The effort would eventually take over 250,000 photos, building public support for Roosevelt's New Deal policies.
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