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The Tires Along the Middle Branch, January 1973

Jim Pickerell’s 1973 photograph shows a tire-strewn shore along Baltimore’s Middle Branch. It was part of DOCUMERICA, the EPA’s effort to record the environment and everyday American life.

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Discarded tires cover a muddy harbor shore, with boats and industrial structures beyond the water.
Tires and trash along the Middle Branch of Baltimore Harbor, January 1973. Photograph by Jim Pickerell for DOCUMERICA. National Archives, 412-DA-4391. View the archival record.

Discarded tires line the shore of Baltimore Harbor’s Middle Branch in this photograph by Jim Pickerell, taken in January 1973.

Pickerell was photographing for DOCUMERICA, an Environmental Protection Agency project announced in 1971. The agency hired photographers to record environmental problems, its own work and the everyday lives of Americans.

The ambition went beyond assembling dramatic pictures of polluted places. As National Archives curator Bruce I. Bustard explains, the project was intended to establish a photographic record against which environmental change could be measured. Photographers could document a problem and return to the location to show what had happened.

For an earlier view of the working harbor, compare Baltimore’s waterfront industries on a 1917 map.

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Filed underFaces & Places of YesterdayThe Best Of

Topics1970s · Baltimore Harbor · Photography

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