Franklin D. Roosevelt

Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected president 4 times, more than anyone before or since. He led the country through the worst years of the Great Depression and most of World War II, and he was photographed more than any president before him. He came from a wealthy family in Hyde Park, New York, and was a distant cousin of Theodore Roosevelt. His wife, Eleanor, was Theodore's niece. In 1921, at age 39, he was struck by an illness diagnosed as polio and lost the use of his legs. He spent years trying to recover, then went back into politics. He was elected governor of New York in 1928 and president in 1932.

Roosevelt took office in March 1933, with banks failing across the country. The programs that followed came to be called the New Deal: the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Works Progress Administration, Social Security, and many more. He spoke to the public directly over the radio in what were called fireside chats, and millions listened.

The New Deal also produced an enormous body of photographs. Government photographers documented farms, towns, dust storms and migrant camps, and much of that work is in the Library of Congress. Roosevelt's era is one of the best-recorded stretches of American life for that reason alone.

There is a striking gap in the pictures of the man himself. Roosevelt could not walk without help, but very few photographs show him in a wheelchair or being lifted. The press generally agreed not to take such pictures, and his staff made sure of it. Most images show him seated in a car, at a desk, or standing at a podium with braces hidden under his trousers. Once you know this, you start to see how carefully each picture was set up.

He died on April 12, 1945, at Warm Springs, Georgia, weeks before the war in Europe ended. His home at Hyde Park is now a national historic site, and his presidential library there, opened in 1941, was the first of its kind.