"BACK HOME AGAIN IN INDIANA" became a popular hit tune in 1974 and the title of a book was borrowed from that song. Robert Reid was editor of "Back Home Again" compiling Public Security Administration photographs, primarily from the mid-thirties and published by Indiana University Press in 1987.
Dorothea Lange is one of a roster of photographers employed for the project, and she went on to become famous for her work. In this book her pictures are mainly of the harvesting of oats. This series is of particular value now that farming practices are mechanized and on a scale unimagined at that time.
The New Deal project was to focus on "the ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished" and these are shown starkly in pictures of family resettlement, of farm sales & moving days. On p. 12 is a poignant portrait of a young wife posed in front of a wall papered with newspapers; a series showing the Great Flood of 1937 on pages 36 - 46 remind the reader sadly of the "digging out" from Gulf Coast hurricanes in 2005. Some photographs are valuable from an historic viewpoint: a "vintage" school bus; a truck driver in a diner where most menu items are 5 cents, or ten; lining up to use the "Free Toilet" in a Greyhound bus station; also, a series taken during wartime, of a U.S. Army Chaplain's School at Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indianapolis.
Some are portraits of excellent design and clarity: hanging laundry (p.34), boarding a Greyhound bus (p.124), two men sleeping with luggage in a waiting room (p.127). The last two are the work of Esther Bubley, another talented woman perhaps new to a profession that opened up because of the Great Depression.
Mid-Westerners are fond of 'saving history' and mcHAIKU hopes that Hoosiers will continue the tradition honored in this book. Offered are many reminders of people who lived & worked hard in the hope that their children would experience 'better' lives.
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