Project Topics

Though it seems improbable on the face of it
You must master the huge retards and have faith in the slow
Blossoming of haystacks, stairways, walls of convolvulus,
Until the moon can do no more. Exhausted,
You get out of bed. Your project is completed
Though the experiment is a mess.
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)

... one of art photography’s most vigorous enterprises—[is] concentrating on victims, on the unfortunate—but without the compassionate purpose that such a project is expected to serve.
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)

Oh Death he is a little man,
And he goes from do’ to do’ ...
—Federal Writers’ Project Of The Wor, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)