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The Photography Project in Indiana | Archibald MacLeish's Land of the Free

Archibald Macleish's
Land of the Free

Land of the Free coverArchibald MacLeish's Land of the Free was published in 1938. The book, described by MacLeish as "...the opposite of a book of poems illustrated by photographs. It is a book of photographs illustrated by a poem" includes 88 photographs by Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, Arthur Rothstein and Ben Shahn.

MacLeish used photos from the Farm Security Administration and other agencies to accompany what he called a "sound track." The tone of this track is distress, worry, disillusionment and a sense of unease about the future of America and is exhibited in these passages:


Whether the great American dream was the dream of
Standing alone on the front stoop in our galluses
Telling them soft and easy how to get there

And the stoop sags in the sun and we're not telling them

We can't say

We aren't certain
and

We wonder whether the great American dream
Was the singing of locusts out of the grass to the west and the
West is behind us now:

The west wind's away from us

We wonder if the liberty is done:
The dreaming is finished

We can't say

We aren't sure

Many of the photos MacLeish choose for the book were the gritty, stoic, sober photos, now considered classics, that are often associated with the work of the FSA. These photos were meant to measure poverty and not necessarily hide it, to show individuals struggling against odds and to instill pride and engage sympathy from those able to help.


Archibald Macleish

Archibald MacLeish
Wikimedia Commons

MacLeish was born in Glencoe, Illinois on May 7, 1892. He was an American poet, writer, Librarian of Congress, and he received three Pulitzer Prizes for his work. He graduated from Yale University in 1915 and two years later his first book of poems, Tower of Ivory, was published.

MacLeish joined the United States Army in 1917 and served in France as a field artillery officer during the First World War. He resumed his studies after the war and received a law degree from Harvard Law School in 1919.

In 1923 MacLeish gave up his legal career in Boston and toured Europe, publishing several books of poetry. He worked as editor of Fortune magazine from 1929 to 1938 and continued to write poetry, including His Frescoes for Mr. Rockefeller's City, which was described by a commentator as "campaign poetry" for Franklin D. Roosevelt.

In 1936 MacLeish wrote an article for New Masses urging the US government to support the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War, and along with John Dos Passos, Lillian Hellman, and Ernest Hemingway helped finance The Spanish Earth, a documentary about the war. In 1937 he wrote a radio play about the rise of fascism in Europe entitled The Fall of the City.

He was an admirer of Franklin D. Roosevelt, who appointed him Librarian of Congress in 1939. MacLeish held this job for five years, and it was during his tenure as Librarian of Congress that the photographs of the Farm Security Administration were transferred to the Library.

During World War II MacLeish also served as director of the War Department's Office of Facts and Figures and as the assistant director of the Office of War Information. He spent a year as the Assistant Secretary of State for cultural affairs and another year representing the US at the creation of UNESCO.

He retired from public service and returned to academia. MacLeish died in Boston in 1982.

Reference: MacLeish, Archibald (1938). Land of the Free. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company.