New exhibition alert! Faces of Inequality: Depression Era Photography opens June 2, 2026 at MAACM

As America struggled through the hardships of the Great Depression, photographers across the nation turned their cameras toward the lives of the marginalized and disenfranchised, creating images that revealed both suffering and resilience with unprecedented honesty.

The upcoming photography exhibition, Faces of Inequality: Depression Era Photography brings together thirty photographs by Dorothea Lange, Eudora Welty, Marion Post Wolcott, Ben Shahn, Walker Evans, and others. Opening June 2, 2026, in the fourth-floor graphic design gallery at the Museum of the American Arts and Crafts Movement, this focused exhibition explores the many ways documentary photographers interpreted American life during one of the nation's most difficult eras.

Through images of poverty, labor, segregation, resilience, and everyday life, these artists transformed photography into both historical record and powerful social commentary. Lange's emotionally charged images sought reform and public awareness, while Welty approached photography with the sensitivity of a storyteller. Wolcott examined the realities of race and community in the American South, Evans emphasized structure and vernacular culture, and Shahn infused documentary imagery with social conscience and human empathy.

Together, these works reveal how photography shaped America's understanding of inequality, giving enduring visibility to communities that were too often overlooked, marginalized, and disenfranchised.