This nationwide documentary project by the EPA shows a diverse, changing America. We need a similar perspective today. In the early 1970s, a groundbreaking photo project under the auspices of the then-new Environmental Protection Agency attempted to answer two questions: How does one define the environment, how does the environment impact Americans, and more broadly, what does the United States looks like"
Documerica, an extensive documentary effort commissioned by the agency, was meant to serve as a sort of ?visual baseline,? a record of the environment during a time of rising concerns about pollution. In practice, it became a sprawling, six-year project that captured life in all 50 states, sending 115 professional photographers fanning out across the country. While 22,000 images were ultimately collected, the results were never fully promoted or assembled for any grander purpose; the negatives currently sit in the National Archives, and select shots have been digitized on a government Flickr account. Select images will be reissued as part of a forthcoming book celebrating graphic design at the EPA. But the entire project deserves a full retrospective.

Dick Swanson
Stacked cars in city junkyard will be used for scrap, August 1973

Danny Lyon
The Kosciusko Public Swimming Pool in the heart of the Bedford-Stuyvesant district of Brooklyn in New York City. The original caption read, in part, ?some of the best Ame...