| 1936 | Europe • France
| Georges Hugnet publishes La Septičme Face du Dé (Paris: Jeanne Bucher, 1936). |
| 1936 | Europe • Germany
| The Berlin Olympic Games is held and used as an immense propaganda opportunity by the Nazi party. Leni Riefenstahl photographs the athletes and her book, Schönheit im Olympischen Kampf, is published in 1937.
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| 1936 | North America • USA
| Kodachrome color film |
| 1936 | North America • USA
| First issue of the influential photo magazine LIFE comes out in the USA. Its use of the extended photo essay has an influence on generations of photojournalists. (23 November 1936) |
| 1936 | North America • USA
| Arthur Rothstein takes a photograph for the Rural Resettlement Administration (later the FSA) of Fleeing a dust storm. Farmer Arthur Coble and sons walking in the face of a dust storm, Cimmaron County, Oklahoma. It becomes one of the classic photographs of the Dust Bowl.
"The most interesting and dramatic thing to me was to show not the abandoned farms but the relation of the people to their environment: what effect it had on them, their reaction to it. The picture of the man and his two sons seemed to sum it all up." |
| 1936 | Europe • Spain
| Robert Capa takes his most famous photograph Loyalist Militiaman at the Moment of Death, Cerro Muriano during the Spanish Civil War. It becomes one of the seminal war images. (5 September 1936)
Heart of Spain: Robert Capa's Photographs of the Spanish Civil War
Robert Capa; Juan P. Fusi Aizpurua; Richard Whelan; Fusi Aizpurua; & Catherine Coleman |  |
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| 1936 | Europe • Germany
| Agfacolor color film is introduced. |
| 1937 | North America • USA
| Margaret Bourke-White and Erskine Caldwell publishes You Have Seen Their Faces.
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| 1937 | North America • USA
| The New Bauhaus is founded in Chicago by László Moholy-Nagy and in the 1950s it is merged into the Illinois Institute of Technology. The institution follows the spirit and curriculum of the Bauhaus in Germany that was closed down in 1933 due to political pressure as the Nazis gained dominance. It has an important place in photography with Gyorgy Kepes, Nathan Lerner, Arthur Siegal, Aaron Siskind and Harry Callaghan teaching there. |
| 1937 | North America • USA
| First issue of Popular Photography published (May 1937) |
| 1937 | North America • USA
| The retrospective exhibition Photography 1839-1937 opens in the spring at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York and is the first comprehensive exhibition on the history of photography. The exhibition is organized by Beaumont Newhall and the catalogue Photography, 1839-1937 evolves into one of the standard histories of photography and greatly influences who has been included in the accepted history. |
| 1937 | North America • USA
| Edward Weston receives the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellowship - the first awarded to a photographer. |
| 1937 | North America • USA
| As the USA is in the Great Depression of the 1930s the Farm Security Administration (FSA) is established by the Department of Agriculture. It employs many socially committed photographers to record the lives of everyday people. The archive they produce becomes one of the historical treasures of the USA. (September 1937) |
| 1937 | Europe • Great Britain
| In the UK the Mass Observation project is founded to record the everyday lives of common people in minute detail. It does not produce the volume of photographs of the FSA in the USA but Humphrey Spender takes 900 photographs for his Worktown project.
Humphrey Spender's Humanist Landscapes: Photo-Documents, 1932-1942
Humphrey Spender (Photographer) |  |
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| 1937 | North America • USA
| The airship Hindenburg explodes at Lake Hurst, New Jersey with the loss of 36 lives. Black and white shots are by taken most of the press photographers present including a sequence of three in rapid succession by Murray Becker (Associated Press). 35mm color Kodachrome photographs are taken by Gerry Sheedy (New York Sunday Mirror). (6 May 1937) |
| 1938 | North America • USA
| Walker Evans publishes American Photographs.
Walker Evans: American Photographs
Lincoln Kirstein; & Walker Evans (Photographer) |  |
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| 1938 | Europe • Great Britain
| Stephan Lorant founds the photographically illustrated Picture Post in the UK. The first issue comes out on 1 October 1938 (1 October 1938) |
| 1939 | North America • USA
| Berenice Abbott publishes Changing New York.
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| 1939 | North America • USA
| Dorothea Lange publishes An American Exodus with text by Paul Schuster Taylor (New York: Reynald Hitchcock, 1939). |
| 1939 | North America • USA
| Retrospective of the documentary photography of Lewis Hine (1905 to 1938) at the Riverside Museum, N.Y. City (now the Nicholas Roerich Museum) organized by Elizabeth McCausland, Beaumont Newhall and Berenice Abbott with sponsors including Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand, Edward Steichen, Willard and Barbara Morgan. (January 1939) |
