- The Depression-era photograph "Migrant Mother" by Dorothea Lange depicts a mother and her children living in poverty, the mother's face showing strength, worry, concern and fear.
- Jacob Lawrence's painting series "The Migration of the Negro" from 1941 depicts the movement of African Americans from the rural South to the industrial North, with trains linking the panels and improved conditions in the North coming at a price.
- Grant Wood's 1930 painting "American Gothic" portrays two figures in austere rural clothing that represent types of people the artist knew growing up in Iowa.