To celebrate the U.S. Bicentennial in 1976, the milestone anniversary of the country’s founding, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) created a grant program to fund a series of regional photographic projects that documented both people and places across the country. Inspired by the legacy of the Farm Security Administration’s photographs during the Great Depression, the NEA envisioned these surveys as a new portrait of the nation, during a pivotal chapter in its history.