During the 1936 Presidential campaign, a conservative North Dakota newspaper attempted to discredit the New Deal and President Roosevelt by inaccurately labeling this photo as “fake.” But the photo was real—one of several images that Rothstein had composed by photographing a skull at different angles and positions on a 10-foot patch of ground. The newspaper correctly noted that the skull had probably been there for years, and such a photo could be taken any year. True enough, but the images effectively told the story of remote, over-grazed land damaged by a worsening drought.

The paper’s motives were revealed by the timing of its “fake photo” story, which ran on the day President Roosevelt arrived in Fargo to tour stricken local farms and federal drought-relief projects. Eventually, the truth prevailed. There was a severe drought. Americans could see the evidence in Rothstein’s photos of the conditions he witnessed, from the Dust Bowl in the southern Great Plains to the struggling farms and ranches in the Dakotas.