Omen: Phantasmagoria at the Farm Security Administration Archive

Dark, surreal scenes hidden in an iconic photographic archive of Depression-era America

Drawing from approximately 40,000 works of the Farm Security Administration Photographic Archive (1935-42) housed at the New York Public Library, Omen reviews and reframes this landmark project of modern American documentary photography. The monumental project features works by storied photographers such as Russell Lee, Dorothea Lange, Ben Shahn, Walker Evans, Carl Mydans, Arthur Rothstein, Gordon Parks and Jack Delano. Many of the more iconic images that arose from this initiative were instrumental in constructing a hegemonic narrative of triumph against adversity in Depression-era America. In scrutinizing the backgrounds and secondary characters of some lesser-known photographs, however, a more turbulent story emerges.
Omen is co-edited by Mexican artists León Muñoz Santini and Jorge Panchoaga, providing a fresh perspective on this quintessentially American study. The image sequence amplifies the eerie details in enlarged, stark black-and-white images, creatively cropped and abutted together to form insidious connections. These hidden stories are premonitions of the visible and invisible specters of systemic injustice that characterize American society, their cycles renewing with each successive generation. Thus, Omen at once serves as a mirror for the anguished reality of today, and as a device for reflection on how historical and documentary photography is read and understood: taking the editorial gaze to its ultimate consequences. The book includes a narrative text by novelist and poet Lucy Ives.