In 2006 Museum in the Park in Logan hosted the photo exhibit "The Omar Project: Not a Simple Story," curated by West Virginia photographer Betty Rivard. This exhibit consisted of twenty black and white photographs of everyday life in Omar, Logan County, along with background information. These photographs were taken in 1935 and 1938 by photographers who were employed by the federal government under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal programs.
The visits to Omar were part of a larger project to take photographs across America between 1935 and 1943. Fifteen photographers took over two thousand photographs in West Virginia. Many of the books that were later published about the larger project and the individual photographers feature photographs taken in Omar and other places in West Virginia. The photographs are all available on the internet through the U.S. Library of Congress (www.loc.gov), American Memory Project, FSA depression-era photographs collection. Most of the photographs in this exhibit were made in a darkroom from the original negatives.
The exhibit will also tour to the Southern West Virginia Community and Technical College, Logan and Williamson campuses, and to the West Virginia University Library, West Virginia Collection. It will be permanently housed at the Logan Interpretative Center that is to be built off of Corridor G.
On the following pages you can view the images and information from The Omar Project.