Chicago, 1941

John Vachon was 26 when these pictures were taken. But five years earlier, when he joined the Resettlement Administration—later the Farm Security Administration—as an assistant messenger, Vachon had had no interest in photography. It was through working alongside FSA photographers that the desire to get behind the camera was born. This set of photographs sees Vachon wandering the Chicago streets and capturing the life he found there, at a discrete distance. The skills that he had received from FSA colleagues like Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange and Gordon Parks are plain to see.