VALDOSTA — Dustbowl photos. Black-and-white grit stain faces. Hardscrabble madonnas and smudge-faced children.

A toddler holds a Coca-Cola bottle, glass neck stoppered by a baby-bottle nipple. Child sits in the arms of a mother desperate and tired behind her Coke bottle glasses. The photograph’s cropping suggests everything they own has been stuffed into a car. Mother and child, the cut of their clothing implies better days past, the fur-collared jacket, the ruffled neckline. Grit, stains, wrinkles cling as rumpled evidence: fallen on hard times; more hard days ahead.

Another mother sits close with her children. A migrant mother huddled beneath the sag of canvas. A tent pitched in the middle of nowhere. Lined across her face are a world’s cares, lined like the topography of a harsh map lost in America. Sand, pores, wrinkles mark the stark terrain of her face. A face framed by the Depression, a face portrayed as a victim of dust, poverty, a sad ripple of faraway stock market crashes and inept politics. Tough hands cling to children. Hard eyes stare into an unseen future. Eyes seek a horizon. Nothing’s easy. She will survive.

These are among the expected photographs viewers will find in “This Great Nation Will Endure: Photographs of the Great Depression,” opening Monday evening in the Valdosta State University Art Gallery.

These expected images look like scenes from John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath,” images that speak of the Dust Bowl, the westward migration of a choked and parched Midwest. Images so iconic, the exhibit would seem incomplete without them.

Yet, the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum has sent 172 Depression-era photographs to VSU Art. These pictures capture not only the Depression in the Midwest but throughout the United States: The Great Plains and the Southwest, California and the Far West, the South, the Northeast.

They reflect the great panorama of the American rainbow of faces and races, all in black-and-white photography.

The VSU Art Gallery likely won’t be able to hold all of the photographs and information displays, but curator Julie Bowland plans to exhibit as many as possible, representing all of the American regions within the confines of the gallery.

Bowland worked for years to secure this exhibit for VSU. She continued requesting it even when her inquiries were initially ignored. She negotiated though the national tour’s organizers originally felt the VSU Gallery too small. Bowland kept at it until the contracts were signed many months ago.

“Given what’s happened to the economy, everyone wants this exhibit now,” Bowland says. “We’re one of the places lucky enough to have it.”

From 1935-42, the Farm Security Administration sent a photographic unit throughout the country. The project made the photographers legendary: Dorothea Lange, Gordon Parks, Ben Shahn, Walker Evans, Arthur Rothstein, Carl Mydans, Russell Lee, John Vachon, Marion Post Walcott, Jack Delano.

Their mission: “Document the lives and struggles of Americans enduring the Great Depression.”

Bowland describes what they accomplished as part portraits of the Great Depression, part propaganda that FDR’s New Deal programs were improving Americans’ lives.

“There is the human aspect of this show and the propaganda aspect,” she says, underscoring the point that the show is designed to appeal to many interests. The show can appeal to viewers interested in history, in politics, in photography.

It is relevant, showing that today’s furloughs may be difficult but nowhere near as desperate as the flight of thousands of Americans from region to region, seeking work, land, food, hope.

Younger generations who have heard of the hardships of the 1930s can see just what the term “Great Depression” meant to people across the United States, Bowland says.

Older generations may discover memories hidden within these images. For them, interest in this exhibit may be more personal.

“My 80-year-old father is very excited to see this show,” Bowland says, “because he lived through the Great Depression. He remembers these things.”



GALLERY

Valdosta State University Art hosts the nationally touring “This Great Nation Will Endure: Photographs of the Great Depression.”

Where: VSU Art Gallery, VSU Fine Arts Building, corner of Oak and Brookwood.

Reception: VSU Art hosts a free, public reception, 7-8:30 p.m. Monday.

Run dates: Show runs through Sept. 11.

Tours available; for gallery hours, more information: Call 333-5835; or e-mail Julie Bowland, VSU Gallery curator, jabowlan@valdosta.edu.