Photographic Roots of the EPA

On the day that Kodak files for Chapter 11 Bankrupcy, it's interesting to see what was done to document the American environment, entirely with color and black & white negatives. over 40 years ago. For the Documerica Project (1971-1977), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) hired freelance photographers to capture images relating to environmental problems, EPA activities, and everyday life in the 1970s. The National Archives digitized part of the series "Documerica". More than 15,000 of these slightly faded images are available in the Archival Research Catalog (ARC). Thousands more are also in the public domain via Flickr. (Photo at right By Danny Lyon: El Paso, 1971)