The Hitchhiker

Robert Gwathmey created an ironic juxtaposition of downtrodden hitchhikers with bright billboards promising an American life that was elusive during the Depression. In his history of the 1930s, Harper's editor Frederick Lewis Allen noted "the vastly increased thumbers on the highway" that he characterized as "a huge army of drifters ever on the move, searching half-aimlessly for a place where they might find a job." The men in Gwathmey's print head in opposite directions, suggesting the futility of their search.