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Exhibition: Killed Negatives: Unseen Images of 1930s America at the Whitechapel Gallery

Published: 
Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - 11:45

Russell Lee, Untitled photo © Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division

Killed Negatives: Unseen Images of 1930s America features thousands of archival negatives by American photographers that were systematically destroyed by Roy E. Stryker, head of the Information Division of the Farm, in the 1930s. 

Stryker commissioned photographers between 1935 and 1944 to document American rural poverty following the Great Depression. Each photograph features a blask disc, created by Stryker with a hole puncher during his relentless editing for the final selection. 

The exhibition includes work by Paul Carter, Jack Delano, Walker Evans, Theodor Jung, Dorothea Lange, Russell Lee, Edwin Locke, Carl Mydans, Arthur Rothstein, Ben Shahn, John Vachon, Marion Post Wolcott.

The exhibition is on display at the Whitechapel Gallery until the 26th August.

Find out more here: http://www.whitechapelgallery.org/exhibitions/killed-negatives-unseen-images-1930s-america/

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