Providing a unique view of American life during the Great Depression and Second World War, each Fields of Vision volume includes an introduction to the life of a Farm Security Administration (FSA)/Office of War Information (OWI) photographer with 50 evocative images selected from their work in the Library of Congress's collection. Transporting the viewer to American homes, farms, and streets of the 1930s and 1940s, they offer a glimpse of a new narrative and intimate style that defined America.

John Vachon was born in Minnesota in 1914. He joined the FSA in 1936 as an assistant messenger and became an official photographer in 1941. Unlike the photographs of most of his FSA peers, many of Vachon's are distinctly urban. In 1947 he started shooting for Life and Look magazines, and remained as a staff photographer at Look until it closed in 1971. He died in 1975.