Concerned with the human condition and committed to addressing social issues with his photography, Jack Delano was well matched to the Farm Security Administration. The FSA was established in 1935 as part of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal programs and given the mission to support small farmers and restore land and communities damaged by the Depression. The photographers employed under the FSA (which also included Charlotte Brooks, Esther Bubley, Marjory Collins, Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Russell Lee, Carl Mydans, Gordon Parks, Arthur Rothstein, Ben Shahn, John Vachon, and Mary Post Wolcott) produced images that greatly impacted how both policy-makers and the general public understood the Depression.
Roy Stryker hired Delano as an FSA photographer in 1940, and Delano soon became known for his strong compositions and sensitivity to his subjects. Like other FSA photographers, Delano traveled throughout the United States documenting American culture and people while also completing… read more
Concerned with the human condition and committed to addressing social issues with his photography, Jack Delano was well matched to the Farm Security Administration. The FSA was established in 1935 as part of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal programs and given the mission to support small farmers and restore land and communities damaged by the Depression. The photographers employed under the FSA (which also included Charlotte Brooks, Esther Bubley, Marjory Collins, Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Russell Lee, Carl Mydans, Gordon Parks, Arthur Rothstein, Ben Shahn, John Vachon, and Mary Post Wolcott) produced images that greatly impacted how both policy-makers and the general public understood the Depression.
Roy Stryker hired Delano as an FSA photographer in 1940, and Delano soon became known for his strong compositions and sensitivity to his subjects. Like other FSA photographers, Delano traveled throughout the United States documenting American culture and people while also completing specific assignments (one of his most famous involved the country’s train system). Other photographers working for the FSA include Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, and Gordon Parks. In 1943 FSA was eliminated as “budget waste” and subsumed into the Office of War Information (OWI).He travelled to Puerto Rico in 1941 as a part of the FSA project. This trip had such a profound influence on him that he settled there permanently in 1946.
With his wife Irene (a second cousin to fellow photographer Ben Shahn) he worked in the Community Division of the Department of Public Education producing films, for many of which Delano composed the score.4 Delano also directed Los Peloteros, a Puerto Rican film about poor rural kids and their love for baseball. The film remains a classic in Puerto Rican cinema.
Jack Delano’s musical compositions included works of every type: orchestral (many composed for the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra), ballets (composed for Ballet Infantil de Gilda Navarra and Ballets de San Juan), chamber, choral (including a commission for Coro de Niños de San Juan) and solo vocal. His vocal music often showcases Puerto Rican poetry, especially the words of friend and collaborator Tomás Blanco. Blanco, Délano and his wife Irene collaborated on children’s books. The most prominent of these remains a classic in Puerto Rican literature: The Child’s Gift: A Twelfth Night Tale by Tomás Blanco, with illustrations by Irene Délano and incidental music (written on the margins) by Jack Délano.
His score for the film “Desde las nubes” demonstrates an early use of electronic techniques. Most of his works composed after he moved to Puerto Rico are notable for using folk material in a classical form. Jack Delano died in Puerto Rico in 1997.
Jack Delano was born Jack Ovcharov in Kiev, Ukraine on August 1, 1914. He emigrated to Philadelphia with his family in 1923. In 1932 he began his study of drawing and painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and in 1936 first took up photography during study in Europe. Delano was the recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship in 1946, and his work has been exhibited at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; El Museo del Barrio, New York; and En Foco Gallery, Bronx, New York, among many other institutions. —Museum of contemporary photography, Wikipedia
