LeRoy Robbins: New Deal Photographs
Joseph Bellows Gallery presents LeRoy Robbins: New Deal Photographs, on view through January 24, 2026, in the gallery’s Atrium space. The exhibition features vintage photographs made in California during the 1930s, when LeRoy Robbins was working under the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project. Produced during the New Deal, these images reflect the social and economic shifts of the Great Depression through a restrained photographic language grounded in form, structure, and tonal clarity.
Established between 1935 and 1943, the Federal Art Project was the most extensive of the New Deal’s cultural initiatives, designed to provide sustained employment for artists while affirming art as a public and civic endeavor. In 1936, Robbins joined the project at the invitation of Edward Weston, becoming part of a group of California photographers that included Edward Weston, Brett Weston, Sonya Noskowiak, Nacho Bravo, and Hy Hirsch.
Distinct from other FAP units that focused on documenting public artworks or infrastructure, this group pursued a quieter approach, attentive to modest subjects and formal precision. Robbins’ photographs exemplify a synthesis between aesthetic rigor and documentary intent, addressing social realities indirectly through composition and visual restraint. His work reveals the tensions of the era—between progress and uncertainty, hope and loss—while contributing a distinctive voice to the history of New Deal–era photography.
About the Author
LeRoy Robbins (1904–1987) moved to California from St. Louis in 1932 after the Great Depression severely disrupted his commercial photography business. Drawing on his experience as official photographer for the City Art Museum in St. Louis, he soon found work in Hollywood producing still photographs for major motion picture studios.
In 1937, Robbins joined the Federal Art Project as part of a distinguished group of California photographers that included Edward Weston, Brett Weston, Chandler Weston, Sonya Noskowiak, Nacho Bravo, Sybil Anikeyev, and Hy Hirsch. Centered primarily in Southern California, with connections extending to the Bay Area, the group distinguished itself from other FAP units by emphasizing form, composition, and understated subject matter rather than overt social narrative.
Robbins emerged as particularly adept at addressing the defining tensions of his time through subtle means. His photographs of landscapes, objects, and built environments register the coexistence of progress and loss, optimism and uncertainty. Balancing modernist sensibility with documentary purpose, Robbins’ work occupies a distinctive place in American photography of the New Deal era.
LeRoy Robbins: New Deal Photographs
through January 24, 2026
Joseph Bellows Gallery – La Jolla, CA – USA
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