Maryland in Black and White: Documentary Photography from the Great Depression and World War II

Compelling photographs of people and places throughout Maryland during one of the nation's most anxious decades.

Between 1935 and 1943, the United States government commissioned forty-four photographers to capture American faces, along with living and working conditions, across the country. Nearly 180,000 photographs were taken—4,000 in Maryland—and they are now preserved in the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress. Constance B. Schulz presents a selection of these images in Maryland in Black and White.

Maryland in the 1930s and early '40s truly represented a microcosm of America, a middle ground where beach and mountain, north and south, urban and rural, black and white, farmer and businessman, rich and poor, young and old met. This period also witnessed a turning point in the state's history. The pace and nature of change varied from region to region, but even in areas that seemed most resistant to it—the Chesapeake Bay, where...