Documerica (stylized as DOCUMERICA) was a program sponsored by the

United States Environmental Protection Agency The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is an independent executive agency of the United States federal government tasked with environmental protection matters. President Richard Nixon proposed the establishment of EPA on July 9, 1970; it ...

to "photographically document subjects of environmental concern" in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...

from about 1972 to 1977. The collection, now at the National Archives, contains over 22,000 photographs, more than 15,000 of which are available online. The title is a

portmanteau A portmanteau word, or portmanteau (, ) is a blend of words

Scope

With support from the first EPA administrator,

William Ruckelshaus William Doyle Ruckelshaus (July 24, 1932 – November 27, 2019) was an American attorney and government official. Ruckelshaus served in the Indiana House of Representatives from 1966 to 1968, and was the United States Assistant Attorney General ...

, project director

Gifford D. Hampshire Gifford or Giffords may refer to: People *Gifford (given name) * Gifford (surname) * Gabby Giffords (b. 1970), a former United States politician Places Canada * Gifford Peninsula, on the South Coast of British Columbia * Gifford, British Columbia ...

contracted well-known photographers to work for the EPA on the project. Estimates of the number involved range between 70 and 120, including Erik Calonius, Dennis Cowals, Gene Daniels, Ken Hayman, Anne LaBastille,

Danny Lyon Danny Lyon (born March 16, 1942) is an American photographer and filmmaker. All of Lyon's publications work in the style of photographic New Journalism, meaning that the photographer has become immersed in with, and is a participant of, the do ...

Boyd Norton Boyd Norton (born April 8, 1936) is an American photographer, known for his work in wilderness photography and his environmental activism. He is the photographer/author of 17 books covering topics such as from African elephants, mountain gorill ...

, Yoichi Okamoto, Charles O'Rear,

Marc St. Gil Marc St. Gil (February 10, 1924 – August 13, 1992) was a Dutch-American photographer, best known for his work with the Environmental Protection Agency A biophysical environment is a biotic and abiotic surrounding of an organism or populati ...

, Flip Schulke, Tomas Sennett, Bill Strode, Suzanne Szasz,

Arthur Tress Arthur Tress (born November 24, 1940) is an American photographer. He is known for his staged surrealism Surrealism is a cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists depicted unnerving, illogical ...

and John H. White. They were organized geographically, with each photographer working in a particular area in which they were already active. For example, Michael Philip Manheim worked in

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the capital city, state capital and List of municipalities in Massachusetts, most populous city of the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financ ...

; Jack Corn focused on

West Virginia West Virginia is a state in the Appalachian, Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States.The Census Bureau and the Association of American Geographers classify West Virginia as part of the Southern United States while the ...

and

Tennessee Tennessee ( , ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked state in the Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 36th-largest by area and the 15th-most populous of the 50 states. It is bordered by Kentucky to ...

; Bill Gillette documented miners in

Colorado Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the wes ...

; and

focused primarily on Leakey,

Houston Houston (; ) is the List of cities in Texas by population, most populous city in Texas, the Southern United States#Major cities, most populous city in the Southern United States, the List of United States cities by population, fourth-most pop ...

and

San Antonio ("Cradle of Freedom") , image_map = , mapsize = 220px , map_caption = Interactive map of San Antonio , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = United States , subdivision_type1= State , subdivision_name1 = Texas , subdivision_t ...

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2 ...

. Subjects photographed include urban cityscapes, small towns, rural areas, beaches and mountains. They show people going about their everyday lives as well as working in

farms A farm (also called an agricultural holding) is an area of land that is devoted primarily to agricultural processes with the primary objective of producing food and other crops; it is the basic facility in food production. The name is used fo ...

; waterfronts;

mining Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the Earth, usually from an ore body, lode, vein, seam, reef, or placer deposit. The exploitation of these deposits for raw material is based on the economic ...

and logging, industry and

heavy industry Heavy industry is an industry that involves one or more characteristics such as large and heavy products; large and heavy equipment and facilities (such as heavy equipment, large machine tools, huge buildings and large-scale infrastructure); ...

. Images document junk yards,

highways A highway is any public or private road or other public way on land. It is used for major roads, but also includes other public roads and public tracks. In some areas of the United States, it is used as an equivalent term to controlled-access ...

Amtrak The National Railroad Passenger Corporation, doing business as Amtrak () , is the national passenger railroad company of the United States. It operates inter-city rail service in 46 of the 48 contiguous U.S. States and nine cities in Canada ...

trains In rail transport, a train (from Old French , from Latin , "to pull, to draw") is a series of connected vehicles that run along a railway track and transport people or freight. Trains are typically pulled or pushed by locomotives (often k ...

air The atmosphere of Earth is the layer of gases, known collectively as air, retained by Earth's gravity that surrounds the planet and forms its planetary atmosphere. The atmosphere of Earth protects life on Earth by creating pressure allowing for ...

and

water pollution Water pollution (or aquatic pollution) is the contamination of water bodies, usually as a result of human activities, so that it negatively affects its uses. Water bodies include lakes, rivers, oceans, aquifers, reservoirs and groundwater. Wate ...

; and

environmental protection Environmental protection is the practice of protecting the natural environment by individuals, organizations and governments. Its objectives are to conserve natural resources and the existing natural environment and, where possible, to repair da ...

and

pollution control Pollution is the introduction of contaminants into the natural environment that cause adverse change. Pollution can take the form of any substance (solid, liquid, or gas) or energy (such as radioactivity, heat, sound, or light). Pollutants, the ...

measures. The earliest assignments were closely aligned to the EPA's proposed areas of concern: air and water pollution, management of

solid waste Municipal solid waste (MSW), commonly known as trash or garbage in the United States and rubbish in Britain, is a waste type consisting of everyday items that are discarded by the public. "Garbage" can also refer specifically to food waste ...

radiation In physics, radiation is the emission or transmission of energy in the form of waves or particles through space or through a material medium. This includes: * ''electromagnetic radiation'', such as radio waves, microwaves, infrared, vi ...

and

pesticides Pesticides are substances that are meant to pest control, control pest (organism), pests. This includes herbicide, insecticide, nematicide, molluscicide, piscicide, avicide, rodenticide, bactericide, insect repellent, animal repellent, microb ...

, and

noise abatement Noise control or noise mitigation is a set of strategies to reduce noise pollution or to reduce the impact of that noise, whether outdoors or indoors. Overview The main areas of noise mitigation or abatement are: transportation noise control, ...

. However, photographers had considerable creative freedom about what they shot. As has been discussed by Gisela Parak, photographers working with Documerica were involved in the creation of a new pictorial language to articulate environmental issues. Among the areas depicted are

national parks A national park is a natural park in use for conservation purposes, created and protected by national governments. Often it is a reserve of natural, semi-natural, or developed land that a sovereign state declares or owns. Although individua ...

and

forests A forest is an area of land dominated by trees. Hundreds of definitions of forest are used throughout the world, incorporating factors such as tree density, tree height, land use, legal standing, and ecological function. The United Nations' ...

, including environmentally sensitive areas that were under development or considered for government protection, such as the planned route of the

Alaska Pipeline The Trans-Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS) is an oil transportation system spanning Alaska, including the trans-Alaska crude-oil pipeline, 11 pump stations, several hundred miles of feeder pipelines, and the Valdez Marine Terminal. TAPS is one o ...

Hawaii Hawaii ( ; haw, Hawaii or ) is a state in the Western United States, located in the Pacific Ocean about from the U.S. mainland. It is the only U.S. state outside North America, the only state that is an archipelago, and the only ...

and

Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

Photographers used differing approaches: Boyd Norton's photographs often emphasize the natural beauty of an area, while Alexander Hope's photographs of the

Middletown, Rhode Island Middletown is a town in Newport County, Rhode Island, United States. The population was 17,075 at the 2020 census. It lies to the south of Portsmouth and to the north of Newport on Aquidneck Island, hence the name "Middletown". History Vario ...

dump and

salt marsh A salt marsh or saltmarsh, also known as a coastal salt marsh or a tidal marsh, is a coastal ecosystem in the upper coastal intertidal zone between land and open saltwater or brackish water that is regularly flooded by the tides. It is domin ...

reveal complex inter-relationships of man and nature.

Details

THE STATE OF OREGON WAS THE FIRST TO GO TO A SYSTEM OF ODD AND EVEN NUMBERS DURING THE GASOLINE CRISIS IN THE FALL

Photographers working for the Documerica project received $150 a day along with film and expenses. More than 80,000 photographs were submitted to Gifford D. Hampshire. A selection were kept to become part of the collection, while copies and the unselected images were returned to the photographers. Because the images were part of a federal government project, photographers were required to waive their

copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, education ...

, placing the images in the

public domain The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work to which no exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired, been forfeited, expressly waived, or may be inapplicable. Because those rights have expired, ...

. Like the photographers of the Federal photographic project of the

Farm Security Administration The Farm Security Administration (FSA) was a New Deal agency created in 1937 to combat rural poverty during the Great Depression in the United States. It succeeded the Resettlement Administration (1935–1937). The FSA is famous for its small but ...

during the Great Depression, some of the Documerica photographers interpreted their mission rather broadly, and sometimes artistically. Many of the photographs preserve a distinct visual record of time and place.

Public access

Perhaps a quarter of the images were publicly shown during the 1970s. A group of 155 photographs was shown in an exhibition ''Documerica 1'' at the

Corcoran Gallery of Art The Corcoran Gallery of Art was an art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, that is now the location of the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design, a part of the George Washington University. Overview The Corcoran School of the Arts & Desi ...

in Washington, D.C. for six weeks in the summer of 1972. A number of small traveling exhibits were sent to cities such as New Orleans, Cincinnati, Dallas, and Philadelphia, and the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES) created the exhibit ''Our Only World'' for display at the EPA's Visitors Center and as a traveling exhibit. Digital scans of over 15,000 of the original 35 mm color slides and

black-and-white Black-and-white (B&W or B/W) images combine black and white in a continuous spectrum, producing a range of shades of grey. Media The history of various visual media began with black and white, and as technology improved, altered to color. ...

negatives and prints are available through the

National Archives and Records Administration The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is an " independent federal agency of the United States government within the executive branch", charged with the preservation and documentation of government and historical records. It i ...

's Archival Research Catalog. The quality of the images varies. Older copies made from the original color transparency films tend to be inferior to the quality of the originals. In 2013, the National Archives in Washington, D.C., displayed a curated exhibition, "Searching for the Seventies: The Documerica Photography Project". Curator Bruce Bustard selected a set of images from the Documerica collection and arranged to reprint them from the original slides. The quality of the resulting color images was much higher than that of older color reprints, which had degraded. One hundred reprinted images from the Documerica project were reprinted in the exhibition book ''Searching for the Seventies: The Documerica Photography Project'' (2013), edited by Bruce I. Bustard. In 2013 the string quartet

Ethel Ethel (also '' æthel'') is an Old English word meaning "noble", today often used as a feminine given name. Etymology and historic usage The word means ''æthel'' "noble". It is frequently attested as the first element in Anglo-Saxon names, b ...

created a multimedia show called ''Ethel's Documerica'' which incorporated images from the DOCUMERICA archives. The show premiered at the

Brooklyn Academy of Music The Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) is a performing arts venue in Brooklyn, New York City, known as a center for progressive and avant-garde performance. It presented its first performance in 1861 and began operations in its present location in ...

and went on a national tour managed by Baylin Artists Management.

Gallery

File:VACATIONERS ON MOTORCYCLES - NARA - 544844.jpg, Bikers in Colorado, 1972, Boyd Norton File:FERTILIZING IN THE IMPERIAL VALLEY. (FROM THE DOCUMERICA-1 EXHIBITION. FOR OTHER IMAGES IN THIS ASSIGNMENT, SEE FICHE... - NARA - 553048.jpg, Fertilizing the Imperial Valley, CA, 1972, Charles O'Rear File:ONE OF A FEW REMAINING FARM FIELDS NEAR THE OCEAN IN FAST GROWING ORANGE COUNTY. SOME 4 PERCENT OF THE STATE... - NARA - 557476.jpg, Suburbanization, Orange County, CA, 1975, Charles O'Rear File:APARTMENT TERRACE GARDEN OF A FAMILY AT 170 WEST END AVENUE IN NEW YORK CITY - NARA - 555523.jpg, Nature in New York City, 1974, Suzanne Szasz File:CHILDREN AT REIS PARK, A PUBLIC BEACH IN BROOKLYN, NEW YORK CITY. THE INNER CITY IS AN ABSOLUTE CONTRADICTION TO THE... - NARA - 555892.jpg, Children at a Brooklyn beach, 1974, Danny Lyon File:ONCE ONE OF CHICAGO'S BUSY THOROUGHFARES, 63RD STREET HAS CHANGED WITH THE CHARACTER OF THE CITY. MANY FIRES HAVE... - NARA - 556202.jpg, 63rd Street, Chicago, 1973, John H. White File:DEAD DUCK PULLED FROM A FIVE ACRE POND FILLED WITH ACID WATER, OIL AND ACID CLAY SLUDGE. UNWARY ANIMALS WHICH CAME TO... - NARA - 555854.jpg, Duck killed by polluted pond, Utah, 1974, Bruce McAllister File:CLARK AVENUE BRIDGE IS RENDERED ALMOST INVISIBLE BY HEAVY INDUSTRIAL SMOKE - NARA - 550173.jpg, Air pollution, Cleveland, OH, 1973, Frank John Aleksandrowicz File:Rev jesse jackson.jpg,

Jesse Jackson Jesse Louis Jackson ( né Burns; born October 8, 1941) is an American political activist, Baptist minister, and politician. He was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988 and served as a shadow U.S. senato ...

, Chicago, 1973, John H. White File:VIEW WEST TO PORT VALDEZ, THE GLACIAL FIORD THAT WILL BE THE TRANS-ALASKA PIPELINE TERMINUS, WITH ROBE LAKE IN THE... - NARA - 555683.jpg, Future terminus of Trans-Alaska Pipeline, 1974, Dennis Cowals File:MINER IN THE BLACK LUNG LABORATORY AT THE APPALACHIAN REGIONAL HOSPITAL IN BECKLEY, WEST VIRGINIA, UNDERGOING TESTS... - NARA - 556570.jpg, Testing in the black lung laboratory, West Virginia, 1974, Jack Corn

References

External links

Documerica Project
at the

Documerica
at

Flickr Flickr ( ; ) is an American image hosting and video hosting service, as well as an online community, founded in Canada and headquartered in the United States. It was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and was a popular way for amateur and professiona ...

* {{Authority control Photography in the United States Environmental photography Environment of the United States United States Environmental Protection Agency 1970s in the United States