The Project: Connecticut Through a Wry, Compassionate Lens

 The Project is an ongoing series about WPA art in Connecticut. The series is so titled because writers and artists, in their letters and other communication, referred to the WPA as such. The series is inspired by the Art Inventory Project---which seeks to catalog every WPA work of art in the state---that has been underway for more than two years.

The photographer Jack Delano, who worked alongside Walker Evans and Dorthea Lange for the Farm Securities Administration (FSA) during the Depression, took a multitude of photos of Connecticut in the fall of 1940.

Although his name is somewhat less well-known than some of his contemporaries, his photos are truly masterful. His photos of Connecticut, all of which are searchable through the Library of Congress, document farms, towns, synagogues, mills and factories.

Delano permanently moved to Puerto Rico in 1946, yet his photos of the Northeast and beyond remain an insightful and moving portrait of a bygone era. 

Here, photographer Pablo Delano, who is Jack Delano's son and a professor of art at Trinity College, explicates his father's compositions as well as his rather democratic artistic influences and sense of humor.