Documerica
via:
"Between 1971 and 1977, the Environmental Protection Agency payed freelance photographers $150 dollars a day to document, in a very broad sense, the environment. Now, after almost forty years, thousands of the photographs are available here, with many more of the nearly 17,000 available through the National Archives’ Archival Research Catalog (warning: the ARC can be cumbersome.)"
Don't you think the government should give photographers money more often? I do.