In November 1971, the recently formed Environmental Protection Agency unveiled an ambitious new photography project to the American public. Conceived as a means of cataloging the ongoing environmental crisis, DOCUMERICA aimed to create a "visual baseline" for federal environmental policy. Over the following six years, dozens of freelance photographers produced DOCUMERICA assignments in every state in the Union.
By the project's completion, DOCUMERICA had amassed an archive of more than 20,000 photographs which powerfully visualized the social cost of "environmental harm and defilement." The majority of DOCUMERICA assignments focused on white Americans, with minority communities pushed to the sidelines. However, some photographers were able to use DOCUMERICA as an opportunity to shed light on how the nation's environmental problems disproportionately impacted poor and working-class communities of color. At the same time, they helped to produce something more: a vibrant portrait of Black American life and culture from 1972 to 1977.
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For decades, the DOCUMERICA catalog have been retained in the National Archives. Although the majority of these original files have now been digitized, many are blemished and discolored. Furthermore, while it is possible to search DOCUMERICA's images by location, photographer, and some topic groups such as "Native Americans" and "Migrant Workers," its images of Black life remain scattered and disorganized.
This Land is Your Land aims to address these issues. To date I have identified around 350 images among the approximately 16,000 digitized DOCUMERICA photographs that center Black people or the Black experience (e.g. through picturing Black churches, businesses, or residential homes). These images have been collated through a project Index, and restored photographs will be made available through this website.
This Land is Your Land aims to address these issues. To date I have identified around 350 images among the approximately 16,000 digitized DOCUMERICA photographs that center Black people or the Black experience (e.g. through picturing Black churches, businesses, or residential homes). These images have been collated through a project Index, and restored photographs will be made available through this website.
restored image
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original image
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In addition, This Land is Your Land will place these photographs in conversation with one another through a series of photo-essays, published in collaboration with Black Perspectives, that provide more information about key photographers and assignments. In doing so, it hopes to introduce a new generation to DOCUMERICA and its extraordinary portrait of Black America during the 1970s.
