Abstract

This article examines graphic visualization and visuality in Lester Beall’s 1937 series of posters for the United States Rural Electrification Administration. This series of posters is commonly thought of as raising public awareness of the benefits of electricity in rural America, but it has been unclear as to what was meant by ‘public’ and ‘awareness’ in 1937 in terms of rural reform in the United States. This article posits that to understand how these posters were seen in 1937 requires that there be an accounting of how Beall’s posters graphically visualized the complexities of rural electrification, and how graphic visualization was contiguous with the visual cultural style of bureaucratic communication and the visual sensitivity of a public.

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