"We were really recorders of history, and we were also trying to make people aware of problems that existed," Arnold Eagle once said of his documentary work, which captured the social landscape of the 1930s and '40s United States with compassion and historical awareness. A Hungarian immigrant, Eagle arrived in New York City at age 19 and joined the Film and Photo League, the Federal Arts Project of the WPA, and the Farm Security Administration, all of whom used his photography to chronicle the extensive effects of the Depression. Eagle was also known for ballet portraiture, portraits of artists such as Alexander Calder and Marcel Duchamp, and cinematography for filmmakers Hans Richter and Robert Flaherty (along with teaching filmmaking in his later life.)