A night at O'Reilly's bar
Good times in wartime at a New York bar
Alex Q. Arbuckle
1942
The American Farm Security Administration (FSA) is well known for funding documentary photography of the hardship and poverty of the Great Depression through the lenses of now-legendary photographers such as Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans and Gordon Parks. With the entry of the United States into World War II, the photography unit of the FSA was reassigned to produce wartime propaganda for the Office of War Information.Marjory Collins, a seasoned photojournalist and self-described “rebel looking for a cause,” joined the photo unit of the Office of War Information in January 1942, and shot around 50 assignments covering life on the homefront. She spent much of her time documenting the lives of various ethnic “hyphenated Americans,” seeking to show the country’s diversity and unity in the war effort. She also covered industrial women workers.Here, she photographs a night at O’Reilly’s Bar on Third Avenue in New York, with sailors on shore leave having fun before shipping out.
