Book excerpt: While previous studies of the photographic images of the U.S. southern poor produced by the Farm Security Administration (FSA) have been discussed in the context of individual photographers or the general culture of the Great Depression and the New Deal, Kidd (American history, U. of Reading, UK) situates his examination of the photographs in the institutional context of the FSA and the role played in photographic production by FSA administrator Roy Stryker. The photographs emerged, according to Kidd, from the dialogue between Stryker and his field photographers about the proper way to document disadvantaged and oppressed groups within the framework of a progressive, federal government. The resulting productions reveal "an uneasy dimension to the relationship between individual and the liberal state and its cadres" that is partly an outcome of class cleavages between photographer and subject. Annotation : 2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).