Rehabilitation Clients, Boone County, Arkansas

Boone County, Arkansas, October 1935, by Ben Shahn. A man in overalls and a young woman stand square to the camera against the log wall of their cabin, a kerosene lantern hanging beside them. "Rehabilitation clients" was the government's term for struggling farm families receiving its aid. Shahn is better remembered as a painter, but this pair's level, unsmiling stare is the look that runs through the whole federal archive of the decade.