Most of the photos on this site were extracted from reference images (high-resolution tiffs, 20 to 200 megabytes in size) from the Library of Congress research archive. (To query the database click here.) Many were digitized by LOC contractors using a Sinar studio back. They are adjusted by your webmaster for contrast and color in Photoshop before being downsized and turned into the jpegs you see here.

July 1939. Shoofly, North Carolina. "Tobacco field in early morning where white sharecropper and wage laborer are priming tobacco." View full size. Medium format nitrate negative by Dorothea Lange for the Farm Security Administration.
Today's Top 5