Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Lyman, Polish tobacco farmers near Windsor Locks, Connecticut (LOC)

Delano, Jack, photographer.

Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Lyman, Polish tobacco farmers near Windsor Locks, Connecticut

1940 Sept.

1 negative : safety ; 3 1/4 x 3 1/4 inches or smaller.

Notes:
Title and other information from caption card.
Digital file made from the original print, not the original negative.
Transfer; United States. Office of War Information. Overseas Picture Division. Washington Division; 1944.

Subjects:
United States--Connecticut.

Format: Safety film negatives.

Rights Info: No known restrictions on publication.

Repository: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Washington, DC 20540, hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print

Part Of: Farm Security Administration - Office of War Information Photograph Collection (Library of Congress)

More information about the FSA/OWI Collection is available at hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.fsaowi

Persistent URL: hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ppmsc.00255

Call Number: LC-USF34- 041573-D

Comments and faves

  1. mommy peace, MzMullerz, frances1972, *amy_madans, and 279 other people added this photo to their favorites.

  2. idswart (46 months ago | reply)

    I love this photograph!

  3. Cassies grandma (46 months ago | reply)

    I want to know what the joke was.

  4. coda (46 months ago | reply)

    1940's LOL

  5. E.C. Nature Photos [deleted] (46 months ago | reply)

    This is just great! Made me smile.

  6. © noborders (46 months ago | reply)

    marvelous !
    ;)))

  7. k8sings (46 months ago | reply)

    contagious smiles, captured on film :)

  8. Shutterfool (46 months ago | reply)

    What a cute happy photo, makes you smile looking at it!

  9. trialsanderrors (46 months ago | reply)

    Certainly the most underrated FSA photographer. And no collection of Jack Delano pictures is complete without the girls from Utuado...

  10. jul-oui (45 months ago | reply)

    i love her laugh

  11. PowerPawsNW (45 months ago | reply)

    At last - a non-serious professional portrait. What fun!

    I love Delano's WWII-era work....and he even dabbled in expensive early Kodacolor.

  12. Carl_205 (44 months ago | reply)

    In about 1980, the Library of Congress gift shop sold prints of this photograph (and several others) as a limited edition (they are long out of print!). I was working at the American Folklife Center at the Library at the time, and I wrote back-of-the-print notes for about a half dozen of the selected photographs. In the course of doing this (as best I recall), I ran into Jack Delano (the photographer for this image) and followed up with an exchange of letters. He confirmed the yarn that we had all heard about the photo: "You told the man his pants were falling down." Here is the note I wrote that accompanied the print-for-sale in the 1980s:

    This photograph is part of a group of pictures made in Connecticut between 1937 and 1941 by Farm Security Administration photographers Jack Delano, John Collier, Russell Lee, Edwin Locke, and Marion Post Wolcott. Evidently the agency had offered some agricultural support programs in the region. The photographers' captions suggest that they were sent to portray three overlapping groups: part-time farmers, ethnic farmers, and tobacco farmers. The caption for this photograph, made in a community north of Hartford, reads "Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Lyman, Polish tobacco farmer and FSA client."

    The picture shows a high degree of camera consciousness on the part of the subjects, and can be seen as a collaboration between photographer Jack Delano and the Lymans. The Lymans seem to have assumed the customary pose for a snapshot: standing side by side and facing the camera. Delano, however, does not shoot them head on, but shoots from a low angle to one side. And unlike a snapshot's eye contact and smile, this picture has been made at a moment of high laughter and diverted gaze. Delano explains that he made the couple laugh by telling Mr. Lyman that his pants were falling down. "The thought of such a catastrophe," Delano writes, "apparently made them break up."

    Jack Delano studied art at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and subsequently became interested in photography. He worked for the FSA and the Office of War Information until 1943, finishing his stint with an assignment to Puerto Rico. He fell in love with the island, returning first on a Guggenheim photographic fellowship and later serving as director of Puerto Rico's radio and television operation.

  13. Cassies grandma (44 months ago | reply)

    What a wonderful story. Thanks for sharing it.

  14. kivajo (44 months ago | reply)

    omg! this is fantastic... what great timing. :)

  15. Arty Smokes (deaf mute) (44 months ago | reply)

    Carl_205 Great story. I'm gonna have to start telling people their pants are falling down in order to capture candid moments like this.
    --
    Seen in your FSA/OWI Favorites set. (?)

  16. YawningDog (43 months ago | reply)

    My husband yanks his pants up like this to tease me because I'm always telling him he wears them too high. I laugh every time. :D

  17. patrick.judge42 (43 months ago | reply)

    The last me he gave me some house-keeping money?

  18. budderflyman (42 months ago | reply)

    I like Jack Delano's work very much. I have seen some others he did of tobacco farmers in CT. I had family that lived there and worked in the fields. I remember seeing acres of tobacco under cheese cloth netting. Most of those fields now have houses. The CT River Valley was a perfect place for tobacco to grow. It was very scenic years ago, still is in bits and pieces. Glad you are posting these.

  19. funnyfotoface (41 months ago | reply)

    I think they like each other. I hope they were happy. They certainly look it. JM

  20. JennyTheArtist (40 months ago | reply)

    Hi, I'm an admin for a group called Jenny's Favorites, and we'd love to have this added to the group!

  21. reikopm (39 months ago | reply)

    Oh I love the way she is laughing

  22. leonarddixon7 (38 months ago | reply)

    See more by Jack Delano at this great website:
    shorpy.com/
    - and also many more works by the other artists in this photo set.

  23. This photo was invited and added to the A Time to Every Purpose Under Heaven group.

  24. This photo was invited and added to the Blessed Are the Poor group.

  25. Andreas (no-nick) (20 months ago | reply)

    Interesting, but the family name Lyman does not sound Polish. Nevertheless there are some foreign surnames in Poland as well. Or they could simplify the name after unboarding in the States.

  26. This photo was invited and added to the POLISH: related with Poland but not in Poland group.

  27. esagys (13 months ago | reply)

    Actually they're both Lithuanians, his name was originally Andrius Limonas, according to his son. She was his second wife, Anna (Ona) Gailiunaite (my grandmother's sister) from Vabalninkas, near Birzai, Lithuania. Both are buried at St.Joseph's Cemetary on Rt. 75 near Bradley Airport.

  28. pennylrichardsca (7 months ago | reply)

    I used this image on an altered train case called "The Laughter of Women":

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