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"During the Great Depression, the United States government sent Danish-born photographer Peter Sekaer on a mission through America's back roads to chronicle the lives of ordinary Americans as they struggled through one of the most challenging periods in U.S. history. Now, for the first time, Sekaer's telling odyssey through America is available to the public after years in obscurity. The 87 vintage gelatin silver prints are in an Atlanta High Museum exhibit called "Signs of Life: Photographs by Peter Sekaer," which will be on view from now until January 9, 2011."

"Though it may not get the attention that, say, the pyramids of Egypt or the Empire State Building get, the Hoover Dam is one of the unheralded wonders of the modern world, a massive edifice of over 3.25 million cubic yards of concrete and 582 miles of cooling pipes that provides the West with 4.2 billion kilowatts of energy a year. The monetary cost was nearly 50 million in Depression-era dollars for a project of unprecedented size in the U.S., but the human cost was more dear -- at least 112 people died building the dam. July 7, 2010 marked the 79th anniversary of the start of the project, a huge chapter in the taming of the American West"

Webguide - In the 1930s, the United States faced its greatest crisis since the Civil War. The Stock Market Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression that followed brought an end to the Roaring '20s. The party was over, and for many Americans, life became a matter of survival.