EMPTY PESTICIDE CANS. (FROM THE DOCUMERICA-1 EXHIBITION. FOR OTHER IMAGES IN THIS ASSIGNMENT, SEE FICHE NUMBERS 1, 2... - NARA - 553045

As DOCUMERICA photographers submitted their initial work, it became clear that the images should be shared with the American public sooner rather than later, and the decision was made early on to exhibit the photographs. In August 1972 the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., displayed 155 photographs for six weeks in a small exhibit titled "DOCUMERICA 1." This inaugural exhibit featured the work of only 23 of the nearly 100 DOCUMERICA photographers and highlighted only subjects covered by the project to date, basically images from the southern, southwestern, and west coast regions of the United States. Although the Corcoran exhibit was the first publicized display, it was not the first time the American public had a chance to view the photographs. Before the Corcoran exhibit, Hampshire sent an exhibit of a small, thematically arranged set of photographs to a few select U.S. cities, including New Orleans, Cincinnati, Dallas, and Philadelphia. Hampshire soon realized that he could not be in the business of managing the project and overseeing the traveling exhibits, so he sought to turn over the exhibition responsibility to the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES). The result of SITES involvement was the exhibit titled "Our Only World" at the EPA’s Visitors Center, opened with a ceremony attended by then EPA Administrator Russell E. Train and Smithsonian Secretary S. Dillon Ripley. As DOCUMERICA closed, so did the traveling exhibits. EPA and Smithsonian records indicate that the extended tour of several copies of the "Our Only World" came to a successful conclusion in August 1978. Other records tell of how six duplicate copies of the traveling exhibit found homes with various educational institutions, among them the Neville Public Museum in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas.