Oral history interview with Roy Emerson Stryker, 1963-1965

Preface

The following oral history transcript is the result of a tape-recorded interview with Roy Stryker on October 17, 1963. The interview took place in Montrose, Colorado, and was conducted by Richard Doud for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Interview

Side 1

RICHARD DOUD: Mr. Stryker, we were discussing Tugwell and the organization of the FSA Photography Project. Would you care to go into a little detail on what Tugwell had in mind with this thing?

ROY STRYKER: First, I think I'll have to raise a certain question about your emphasis on the word "Photography Project." During the course of the morning I gave you a copy of my job description. It might be interesting to refer back to it before we get through.

RICHARD DOUD: Very well.

ROY STRYKER: I was Chief of the Historical Section, in the Division of Information. My job was to collect documents and materials that might have some bearing, later, on the history of the Farm Security Administration. I don't want to say that photography wasn't conceived and thought of by Mr. Tugwell, because my backround -- as we'll have reason to talk about later -- and my work at Columbia was very heavily involved in the visual. I had illustrated a book for Mr. Tugwell, I use photographs in my classes , and of course we must never forget that Tugwell was basically and primarily a descriptive economist , as well as a very good theoretical economist. But his introductory approach to economics was what you might call a descriptive approach. And I was a product of that. So, again, let me say that Tugwell, in giving me his instructions on what he thought I ought to do, did include and did recognize that photography was going to be a part of it. Which was interesting, in a way, because if you read the job description -- as I think I'll go and get it and re-read it - there's very little emphasis in that on the role of photography or that there were going to be a photographic unit.

RICHARD DOUD: Well, what do you think that Mr. Tugwell had planned to use to supplement photography in this program?

ROY STRYKER: Well, we should remember that Farm Security was an action program. They were going to help move people out of depressed areas -- primarily rural: it was a rural program. They were going to help people get back into a going-concern situation, to be able to make a living on their places, and to help straighten out their debt difficulties, to help them get better practices. So that basically, he was only concerned with photography, with writing, with newspapers and magazines, as a reporting to his field people, as reporting to the public. I don't honestly know how much, and I can't answer this, I don't know if anybody else will ever know how much Tugwell really conceived having to sell back to the people the thing he was doing. And that, basically, was the only reason - inferred, at least, in your question was, "What was he planning to use photography for?" I think it was only primarily in supplying his field people with tools to make the program clear. And I suppose he had more sense of what we actually accomplished with the photographs of telling the American people about some of these "lower third" and their problems than I realize. But, as I say, basically, his was an action program. And I must say that I think we strayed a long way from where we were supposed to start. And we did it like all things happen -- not exactly accidentally, but in spite of the good plans, the well-chosen words in the job descriptions and in the administrative order. We strayed because circumstances pushed us in this direction. And what we finally did was to wind up with few documents and a lot of pictures.

RICHARD DOUD: Do you think the reason for this was because pictures are more potent as a communications medium than, for example, an articles, or -

ROY STRYKER: No, definitely not, definitely not. Despite the fact that I have been involved, now, for practically all my life since Farm Security days -- from 1933 on, I have been involved almost continuously with photographs. I still think that the printed word, that the word is dominant thing, and the photograph is the little brother of words.

RICHARD DOUD: I'm surprised to hear you say that.

ROY STRYKER: I feel very keenly. And I think the word -- if I may digress for a moment -- I think we've coined a very unfortunate phrase -- "photojournalism." We're riding it hard now. Life (magazine) came along in its early day and was so dominated by the idea of the picture that they almost forgot the words. No, that's not a fair statement; but they kidded themselves into thinking the photograph was the dominant thing. It is not. And my feeling is that there are some times when photographs stand alone, but more often the photograph is, as I say, the corollary, the assistant, and the helper of the word. And (?) of the two joined together. And I don't happen to think the word is "photo-journalism." I think that's too bad that we talk about photojournalism. We don't use the expression "word journalism." Did you ever hear that?

RICHARD DOUD: True.

ROY STRYKER: And so I think it's a little silly that we say "photo-journalism."

RICHARD DOUD: Mr. Stryker, would you care to discuss a bit about the selection of the photographers of the Project? Who you picked, and why they were selected, and how you arrived at choice on individuals?

ROY STRYKER: It isn't a well-organized, uniform approach by any means. Arthur Rothstein was really the first one I had selected. Arthur was a -- graduated the year that Farm Security was getting under way. He had worked for me in a project which I will tell you more about some time, which was a project that I had worked with Rex Tugwell and one of the professors at Columbia on -- a visual record of American agriculture. And Arthur, with many others who were placed under the National Youth Project -- Arthur did photographing of documents, pictures, stuff for me. And he wanted to be with the medical school. It didn't break right for him, and I said, "Come on down, spend a year as photographer with me." And he was the first man that came in with me. And he stayed on, and never took -- and he is now, of course, head photographer for Look magazine. But medicine was something he forgot. Walker Evans was in the Subsistence Homesteads, doing photography for the Interior Department. He was transferred over to Farm Security when resettlement really was organized. So I acquired Walker because he was already hired. A man by the name of Theodor Jung was working with an educational unit -- the exact title I can't remember for the moment, doing graphics, designing booklets, doing layouts things of that nature for this particular unit in the AAA. He was a Viennese boy, had been trained and used a camera a lot, 35mm., and wanted to come over and join us. He came for a while, never took many pictures, and finally decided to go back to the AAA. So he wasn't there very long. Carl Mydans was hired -- because of a sickness, I didn't start, as I had planned to start, when Resettlement first went into action. So Carl Mydans was hired by Suburban Resettlement, which had to do with so-called "greenbelt" towns. Carl was on the staff taking pictures when I finally got back into Washington to take over my job. And due to an administrative order, Carl was transferred over from the greenbelt projects and joined my staff there. It wasn't too long after this that he quit to go work for Life magazine and Russell Lee took his place. Russell had come in looking for work. I was impressed -- very much impressed -- with the man's ability and the series of pictures he showed me. So as soon as Carl had decided to leave, I hunted Russell up and he stayed with us almost till the end of the Farm Security project. Dorothea Lange had done a good deal of work on the immigrants in California. I had seen her work and became very much interested in what she had done, and proceeded to find ways and means to see if she was available. She was, and I got her transferred into our operation. Now, from that point on, there was Jack Delano who came in; Marion Post. There were many others who came in for short times, and there were people who came in after we became -- in operations, at least, before we were actually transferred over to the Office of War Information. But coming back to (?), let me see: there was Ben Shahn. He was never on our payroll but was assigned to other organizations within Resettlement and farm Security, known as Special Skills -- they were largely artists, craftsmen, and designers. And Ben came over -- he was assigned to us and did an extended photographic trip, and contributed, incidentally some of the most exciting, some of the most interesting human documents in the whole file. But Ben was never a full-time Farm Security photographer. In the last days, through the latter part of our time, Ben did come in for a definite job assignment. He went out to Ohio and did a series of pictures in and around Columbus, largely rural -- farming, farm people. I think that covers the bulk of our people. Now, coming back in general, it's very strange that most of our people were interested in art, had some art training, had desires to be artists, perhaps suddenly discovered photography offered them something. Russell was a chemical engineer. Married an artist, painted some, saw a couple of the artists who used cameras very effectively, decided that was what he wanted to do and it would probably be the place to belong. And he took up the camera and turned it in to be a very remarkable man in photography. I think by and large I was looking for people -- because I got more mature, knew more about photography -- never forget, I was pretty unsophisticated when I took that job as far as how to pick a photographer. Let's be very honest about it. In that job and elsewhere, I began to realize it was curiosity, it was a desire to know, it was the eye to see the significance around them. Very much what a journalist or a good artist is, is what I looked for. Could the man read? What interested him? What did he see about him? How sharp was his vision? How sharp was his mental vision as well as what he saw with his eyes? Those are the things you look for.

RICHARD DOUD: You've already mentioned, I think, where some of these people went after the FSA project. Would you care to discuss some of the others? I think that most people know that Mr. Shahn went on to become one of our greater artists in this area. What about the others?

ROY STRYKER: Well, Walker is a staff member of Fortune, with a very interesting assignment, which is -- he's called an editor. He goes out and does special photographic assignments. I don't know how much he does editing inside of it but he's done -- if look through the old copies of Fortune you'll see some quite remarkable picture series.

RICHARD DOUD: This is Walker Evans?

ROY STRYKER: Yes. Remarkable series. Still showing the same old competence, still showing his discerning eye. A series he did on the railroads, on the locomotives, in which he shot the close-ups of the drive mechanism; the beautiful sequence he did in on the old buildings -- the continuation of an early love of his, which was at Saratoga; he went back up and did some of the material up there. You'll see that Walker Evans is still, in his way, continuing his 8 x 10 camera perception, if I may use that strange phrase, of the world about him. Arthur Rothstein left, went into the Army, came out, went to Look magazine, and is now chief photographer there. One man I didn't mention previously is John Vachon. John Vachon, whom I'd like now to add something about that I didn't put in that previous discussion we had, John came into Washington from Minneapolis. I think he came in to go to Catholic University. Got into some trouble down there because he was curious about the world about him and didn't attend classes. Finally wound up as a messenger in our place. I needed -- I'd had a librarian who was so much the librarian that she was going to get us so fouled up in the minute classifications she was working at that -- I asked her to make me an outline one time. I think she wrote around seven pages. I pinned her down and asked her if she could redo it and keep the paging down. We finally went at this for about a week, and I think I wound up with about thirty-some pages. (Richard laughs.) And I in my jesting way said if she couldn't do better than that, I was going to jump off the top of the building (which was about seven or eight stories high). I went off to a meeting, and when I cam back, I had a call from the head of Personnel. And when I went in, he said, "I'm afraid you're in trouble, you've threatened suicide if the woman didn't do so-and-so and she's quitting." (Richard laughs again). And I explained to him what had happened. He said, "Well, she's not staying because she's not going to be the cause of your death."

RICHARD DOUD: This got you John Vachon?

ROY STRYKER: No, no, this is this woman, this librarian, I forget her name now. She was a nice person but with no imagination and never could adjust herself that we didn't need a meticulous, detailed classification of all the documents that might be in some great building. But she did quit, thank goodness. I needed a librarian -- John was out doing filing and messenger work, and I asked him if he'd like to take it. And he took it over and became very successful at it. Because he applied a great deal of common sense that he had. Without knowing too much about it, we got a pretty good file. I came back from vacation once -- I've never had an assistant down there, but I came back and John had taken to loading one of our cameras. He'd gone off on a walking tour and came back with some surprisingly good pictures. Later on it became apparent that John should quit the filing and become a photographer, and he turned in to be a superbly good one. He's what I have said many times is the only "congenital photographer" that I ever realized we had. And he's now of course one of Look's top men. Extremely talented man; extremely talented. And did some superbly good pictures. Marion Post, whom I haven't mentioned much yet, came in late. She'd been doing photography for one of the Philadelphia papers, and she came down, and we needed an extra photographer, put her on. And if you look through the file, you'll find Marion has particularly a great sense of our land, of our terrain and a feeling of people on the land, probably more than some of the others. A great love of people, a great warmth and understanding of people. Marion also suffered from being a very attractive girl, and I always wondered how she could possibly get along. The War was just starting, and I asked Marion one time, I said, "Marion, don't you have some trouble around sometimes?" She said, "Yes, very often a local police picks me up. We have a Coke, and he asks me something about his sex life, and I ask him something about his, and by this time I look at my watch and say, 'If I don't get back to work, I'm going to get fired.'" (Richard laughs). But Marion went through, as I suppose they all did -- that first period of worry and fuss; taking too many pictures. I remember having called her up one at a time and said I was sending her a motion picture camera so she could make more of the same thing. That was probably what she needed to startle her into being more thoughtful and not being quite so insecure, realizing she was better than she thought she was, and sending us in three pictures instead of fifteen. Russell Lee is now freelancing successfully, out in Texas. Jack Delano came in from a WPA project and quickly -- he was a musician and a very good one, an artist by training. And very successful. He's at the moment the head of educational television in Puerto Rico. John Collier was one of our latest ones. John was son of the old Indian Commissioner. He had very little schooling but in some ways was one of the most sophisticated of all of our people, in that strange unsophisticated manner. John has surprising perception. Somewhere or other he got a great deal of sense of what is good photography and, except for his forgetfulness at times, did a good job. He went out on a trip one time and phoned in that he'd forgot his lenses. Of course, (?) dig them up for us and we sent them to him. Another time he went into one of the Regions. They loaned him a car. Some weeks later a call came through and said, "Have you seen John Collier?" "Nope." "He's gone home, he's left the car someplace. We think we know where it is, along a railroad siding, but no key." Sure enough, John had decided he'd had enough, saw the train coming, he stopped, pulled up the car and slammed aboard the train and came on in. (Richard laughs). We found him. He'd been up for two or three nights, working, and we got him out of bed and got the key and got it back. But that made life interesting, because each photographer had his own little idiosyncrasies, and that added zest and glamour to the place.

RICHARD DOUD: What is Dorothea Lange doing?

ROY STRYKER: Dorothea Lange now -- she's been through a long, critical illness; is much better. A very unusual illness. As she said, she's all the doctor books in the United States. But she's shown great fortitude, and she's much better. She and her husband have been traveling. He's given up his position as head of the Economics Department for University of California and has been, has set up some sort of special organization for international study. And she has been with him in Egypt and to the Near East in the last several months. Dorothea is quite an unusual person. She was the real matriarch of our organization. If you look at the pictures she did of the immigrants, hers was the greatest collection of immigrants. They all did them, but Dorothea -- Dorothea, I guess, is the mother; I said the matriarch; she is the mother. And she at the present time is doing very little photography. She has recovered considerably from this serious illness she had, and I gather -- I hear, but I haven't seen her for some time, have a hunch that Dorothea is going to ripen into many years yet, of -- not perhaps photography but taking photography, advising on photography; what I don't know. I wish I knew. I don't know what she'll do.

RICHARD DOUD: Could you tell us something about the standards by which these people worked? Did you have certain things that a photograph must say? Were there certain problems of composition that must be solved? Or certain artistic effects that must be achieved?

ROY STRYKER: The word "composition" was never talked about, never mentioned. It was a taboo word. We didn't talk about composition. I don't like the word. I think it's been loaded with all sorts of very spurious things. They try and get in the electrical and so on compositions. No. We had none of this. Photographers were intelligent people that worked for us. They were communicating. They were intelligent enough -- some of them had art training -- they were intelligent enough to sense what they were doing. They were trying to tell us, tell the public, make pictures that were genuine, that recognized peculiar situations whether it be a piece of geography or a human being, and recognized the pertinent things in this particular situation. They had taken the time to check certain facts or investigate, to understand why they were at that place, and what they were going to do. From that point on, ten pictures were taken. Of those ten pictures, if you looked at them -- we never evaluated them in terms of set values. We looked at them in terms of what did they have to say about this little group of people, this particular village, this particular dust area, or what. I think, to summarize it, they were intelligent people reporting things that they felt and saw based upon past experience, based upon a good deal of investigation. And above all else, particularly as regards the human side of this, a sincere, passionate love of people, and respect for people. I think that's the important thing. At no time did we have rules or criteria in the sense that are inferred in your question.

RICHARD DOUD: A very good answer.

ROY STRYKER: And God knows, we didn't follow any of the rules the cover magazines talk about. (Richard laughs) You'd be surprised that we were bombarded with cover magazines -- "What stop did you use on this picture?" "What film was used?" And I didn't know. And I didn't care. And I sometimes got so disgusted that I gave them fool answers and they published it and then got nixed. They taught them not to ask questions like that. I am not a photographer. I am not so much concerned with things of that particular kind. I have had to tell many people I hadn't the vaguest idea what stop they used, because I didn't know about stops. I was interested in what the picture said; what was in the picture.

RICHARD DOUD: do you consider yourself a humanist, then?

ROY STRYKER: I don't know, I dunno. What's a humanist? I don't know. What do you mean by a humanist? What do you put it in those terms for? You tell me what you're asking and I'll try to answer.

RICHARD DOUD: Well, it seems to me that the best definition of the humanist at this point is Roy Stryker, a man who is intensely interested in the human animal -- what motivates him, the effect he has upon his surroundings have upon him, his interrelationship not only with his surroundings but with his fellow man. I think this is basically what you are interested in.

ROY STRYKER: Well, all right. In a sort of unorganized, illiterate way, yes. I'm an illiterate humanist.

RICHARD DOUD: Very good. I think it would be interesting to know a little bit about the attitude of the people who are photographed. A good many of let's say your immortal pictures, if I may use such a term, are of people. This is probably because people are more interested in people than anything else -

ROY STRYKER: Well -

RICHARD DOUD: What did these people think when your photographers were taking their pictures under certain really unnatural or undesirable conditions? How did these people react to being photographed in these surroundings?

ROY STRYKER: Well, first of all, let me supplement what you have said. After all what was the Depression? It was what hitting the people. And while I was a great believer that it's the geography that makes the people, and underneath it all we kept the land and its geographical structure and so on, but after all, when all is said and done, the problem of the Depression of that period was the suffering human beings that were caught and trapped in it. So obviously we were concerned with people. We had no other choice. And we were the kind of people that we were going to be concerned with. Now, coming on to following up what you have said: I don't know, except in acute instances, because I wasn't in the field. I can only generalize this thing. I can generalize in terms of what photographers told me. I can generalize it in terms of what I see in the photographs. What were their reactions? I can give you a very precise answer in one case which I think is probably quite true. I was with Mr. Lee, Russell Lee, on a trip coming down from some work we'd been doing up in Minnesota and down through Wisconsin. And we saw a very curious, very nice-looking little old lady with her hair done in a little top knot, and we stopped beside the log cabin she lived in. Russell -- I kept quite and listened -- Russell said to her, "Can we take your picture?" And she bristled. "What do you want my picture for?" "We're with Government." "Oh you are, well, I don't want you to take my picture." He said, "Well, now look. There's a lot of people think that you represent a bunch of lazy good-for-nothings. We don't think so. We'd like to tell them a little bit more about who you are, what your problems are." And got her intrigued and she started to talk to him. And it was one of the most interesting experiences I had while I was in this job, one of my few experiences out in the field. We stayed the afternoon, she invited us to lunch, she wanted us to come back and meet some of her neighbors. The picture is still in the file. I still sort of glow when I see it. But there was an interesting illustration of what I think was probably pretty prevalent all the way through. The photographer ran into opposition. He soon conquered it by his honesty, his forthrightness, sympathy, and a certain warmth that they all had. But always their honesty. And I think that was technically -- I think Walker Evans would do it one way, Ben Shahn had quite different way. Ben, of course he was as honest as the rest, but he said, many times he talked to them in terms of what he knew were their problems and got in touch. He used a right-angle viewfinder a lot, and sometimes you look at Ben's pictures and you think you see the consternation, the irritation, the frustrations of these men; but Ben stirred up some of that. Honestly, I don't think there was anything dishonest about Ben's manner, because the questions were asked and the conversations were started in complete fairness. I wasn't with the other -- I don't know how Dorothea would react. Dorothea would, because of, as I said previously, her matriarchal attitude, her mother instincts, would warm up anyone. And if you look at the captions -- she wrote the best captions of all. When you see what she had people say to her, it must have been that she sparked a great deal of simpatica, a great deal of rapport. And Arthur, naïve little Bronx boy that he is -- he doesn't like this but it's a compliment to him -- he'd come out of -- not the slums, not by any means, but the middle class; and he stayed within that naivete of the city boy. I can give you a little illustration of this. Arthur went out to do the cattle story. He met it on a ranch -- I didn't know the people, we were sent there through the Agricultural Adjustment Administration -- the Brewsters, who then had a dude ranch. First of all, they were intrigued with Arthur's knowledge of the cattle business. They got involved and became Arthur's helper to get the right pictures. Later on Mr. Brewster came to Washingotn. He stopped in to see me and thanked me for sending Arthur Rothstein. He said, "Mr. Stryker, we have been quite anti-semitic at our dude ranch. But we were so delighted with Arthur Rothstein that our anti-semitism left us when we (?) Arthur's work." I said, "What did you like about -- " "A sort of strange, sophisticated ignorance. For a city boy that was a surprising amount of knowledge. With it all, he is just a boy who was exuberant, who was seeing a new world." He said, "I can't tell you how pleased we were with him." There's another example. Carl Mydans wasn't with us long but I can just guess. Carl had some of the same thing. Some people would call it bumptiousness. I wouldn't. A love of people and a love of life. And those things were contagious. So you see we had quite a gamut. Walker -- I never went out with Walker but I'm sure that Walker had none of Arthur's instincts, none of his old traits. I'm sure he had nothing of Lange's; quite different than Ben. Walker was apt to stand back and see a static relationship in most of his pictures. A very, very significant -- and I don't use the word "static" in any unfair manner -- Walker could take in the cemetery in a steel town in Pennsylvania, a cross in the cemetery, the streets, crowded houses, steel mills in the backround, and it became a very telling picture. He also took some very interesting people. But at no time -- Walker's pictures were different than anybody else's of people. His pictures of people were always different. They weren't wooden by any means. You have to see them to understand -- I don't think I can explain the difference. You have to see -- you have to see a lot of these things. I don't think that you can always put in words these differences. But if you start looking through the file and laying these pictures out, you'll soon sense it yourself.

RICHARD DOUD: What about the general public -- do you feel that at that time the public understood and appreciated what you were trying to do? I know there's been in certain instances a lot of outcry against particular photographs and particular situations, but in general, do you think the public appreciated your project?

ROY STRYKER: Oh, to some extent, yes. We came at a very propitious time, a very favorable time, I think. Remember, we were a year ahead of Life, about a year ahead of Look. Photographs were new. We were in a period of hard times in this country, a very disturbing time. Even people who weren't hungry -- and none of us was hungry, in a sense, none of the photographers was -- but we -- they had $5 a day and they lived on it -- but -- now I'm talking about what the photographers, about the people we photographed. Let's change that just a little, in answer to your question. People were distressed, disturbed, worried; I think more worried than any of us ever realized. So, as these things were picked up by the newspapers, picked up by the magazines later on, and seen in various ways, I suspect that a lot of the public -- I don't know, nor does anybody know -- but I suspect that more of the public than we realize understood what we were trying to do. I think they found in so many instances a rapport with some of the faces they saw. I don't know. I think we can awfully easily over-emphasize this; very easily. I think it's a dangerous thing to get onto. Now, I'm not trying to duck that; I just wouldn't know. You have no measures of those things; we can't count them; we didn't have any polls at that time. We don't know how many of them read these things, but we apparently were accepted, in more ways than we realize.

RICHARD DOUD: Well, I think possibly one gauge of this acceptance might be the response to the exhibitions that have been put on using these photographs. Whether this is s true gauge or not is a bit difficult to say, because in many cases these shows would have been viewed by only a certain segment or a certain stratum of the society, I suppose. But it seems to me that this is at least a guide to how people reacted.

ROY STRYKER: Well, yes. But it's an awfully limited sampling, and yet I think it's a good sampling. We had one show, one exhibit that I think we could place much weight on. That was a show that was done in New York, at the International Photographic Show exhibit in 1938 at Grand Central Palace. I was quite a large show, and we were given a very good space. We were shorthanded, and two photographers more or less designed the show. It was a tough show, it was a pretty brutal statement of -- by the kind of pictures we selected. As our friend Ben Shahn said later -- he didn't see the show up, he saw the pictures -- he said it gave no one even a chance to catch their breath as they walked around. And the only index we could possibly have had of that show, that we could place any credence in at all, was a box that Rothstein conceived and the blank 3x5 cards. And we wound up with some almost 500 comments. And they were extremely varied -- from calling us "Communists" (although Communism wasn't very well know then, it wasn't the word everybody used) to an enormous number of the people who answered said, "Why isn't something done about it? Why don't we do something about these people?" On the whole, the comments were sympathetic, understanding, and even to the point of being distressed about these conditions; why couldn't something be done. That was one show. Now, I don't think we have any concrete hard facts that we were accepted by 10%, 30%, 40% -- I think we have no answer. We seem to have been accepted, we did survive, we did get talked about. That's about as much as I'm prepared to say.

RICHARD DOUD: At least you made people aware of a situation, whether they were in favor of your methods of doing so or not.

ROY STRYKER: Somewhat. We of course undoubtedly affected a lot people. We made a lot of people aware. And as I say, photographs were fresh then, so maybe we had more impact because of their freshness, because photographs' newness. Life didn't cover many of our stories; Look didn't. So it was done by an enormous number of small magazines. We got into the local presses out through the fields, where field people used the material. I don't know, I wish I did know. But we had no polls, we had no measures -- unlike an advertising agency today, which is forever taking its pulse by having somebody make a test of how many people saw this, what they think -- I don't know. It's useless to try to answer that.

RICHARD DOUD: Mr. Stryker, was there any political problems to be surmounted or circumvented in the Farm Security photography project?

ROY STRYKER: No. I answer you -- as far as I'm concerned, we had very few political problems. The experts took care of them. We did the work, we did the photographs. And we lived in a time in Washington when the politicians weren't harassing as much as the do now.

RICHARD DOUD: Why do you feel there was so little of this -- I mean -

ROY STRYKER: We lived in a damned disturbed country.

RICHARD DOUD: Politicians had something better to do than --?

ROY STRYKER: -- and they weren't going around snapping. They were all disturbed. We were -- as I say, and I say it again -- we were in a very disturbed period. We don't know how close we came to revolution. And we all were concerned with everything. We had a great leader who, as time wore on, political problems increased. But I still was protected. I think it's a simple thing that I was protected, that I don't think political problems -- I told you when we were riding out here about Dr. Weaver, who is the head of FHA, Federal Housing. He was an old Farm Security man and made some remark about people were going to get back to photographing, maybe we ought to use them. I have a feeling that being a Negro, in that unusual position that he was in, that he would be subject to much more scrutiny, that there would be men in Congress who would like to crucify him, would like to bring him up there; people who would question his integrity and question his operations. And I think for him to take to photography would be very dangerous. As I told him, he'd be forced to meet every hour on the hour, and if they didn't have enough committees, they'd make some new ones.

RICHARD DOUD: Well, perhaps the political situation would be much more of a problem no matter who took over a case like this than it was in the 30's.

ROY STRYKER: Oh, certainly. I think that to go down there and try to get a photographic project like Farm Security again would -- you'd have to surmount some pretty dire situations politically. I don't think you could. I don't think the time is right to start another one of these large operations. I don't think it would work. I think if it were promoted by certain people, then the Southerners would take it on. If promoted by somebody else, then the urban people would take it on. And vice versa. No, I just don't think you could do it.

RICHARD DOUD: Well, I think we'll leave that as it is for the time being. And ask what you consider the immediate impact of the project.

ROY STRYKER: Well, I think you have to measure the impact by some things that have happened. I think it affects the Steichen show at the Museum of Modern Art (1955- The Family of Man?). It had a big attendance, it had a lot of publicity, it had a lot of talk. And apparently it's going to move out now; and its second index of impact will be how many places ask for it and what will be the attendance there. I think if we could find some way to evaluate reactions, conversation, comments, which we don't very often (?) to do, we might be surprised how effective it's going to be in Ft. Worth, and if shown in another place how effective it's going to be there. But I don't know how much we can measure those things. I don't know how well we are prepared to know what those impacts are. I know that the Museum show was a success, measured by their terms -- it drew attention, a troop of us came. I don't know what more you can say.

RICHARD DOUD: Well, as against the immediate impact -- and we have sort of talked about this before -- do you think it's too early to consider the more enduring social or political or economic significance of the 270,000 pictures?

ROY STRYKER: In a way yes, and in a way no. I think time will have to operate there, because I think we have a tendency to find a resource. We found the Brady pictures quite late; we used them when they fitted, when they were significant -- some man found them because they could express something that was in him. You see, in the end, the 270,000 or 250,000 pictures are only going to be significant if somebody goes in and takes 15 of them, one of them, 50 of them, and does something. He does an article, makes an exhibit, he puts the frontispiece, he puts the cover because the magazine, the International Harvester, tells a story in such a way that apparently it intrigues the people who've looked at the magazine for years and like it. I think that's the answer -- what can somebody do with it? And in the end, he is a person who wants to communicate, he's a person who wants to express something, he's a person who has an axe to grind -- what will you. And I think that's the answer. Now, I made the -- as time goes on, we found the Brady pictures, we used them quite often. They tend to be war pictures. The Farm Security file is a pretty broad file. Maybe we'll find a lot of things in there to utilize. The state of the use of photographs journalistically is in a sort of a bad state right now, unfortunately, because I think we fail to recognize the relationship between words and pictures. I think Life finds itself in a rather difficult thing, Look is more successful. Why? I don't know. I'm not prepared to say why Look is more successful than Life. But I think this is an unfortunate thing, that we have failed to recognize this fine relationship, this very sensitive relationship between the photograph and the word.

RICHARD DOUD: Well, the fact that there is still an interest in this file of picture is incontestable. Are you surprised, or would you have been surprised in the 1930's that people 30 years later would be excited about the pictures?

ROY STRYKER: I would never have thought about it, it never occurred to me. I lived in 1930, and I lived in '31 and '32 and'33, I lived in each of those years. I wasn't even giving any thought to the future. I hadn't the vaguest idea. Sure, I knew the Brady pictures that were taken. Sure, I look at the Brady pictures and get excited about them. Those were Civil War, those were in the 1860's, and I fell in the 30's, I come in the 30's. Because I had them going -- even before I was involved in Farm Security I knew them, because they were telling me something startling. I saw in some of them things that no amount of text could ever have told me -- the ruins that I saw that Brady had taken looked like some of the ruins of the Old World. Some of the pictures of the soldiers were something that I don't think we have surpassed with all the cameras and all the fine film and all the good photographers we've got in World War I and II. But -- no; as time wore on, I suppose I was more and more intrigued as the file grew and I had a little bit more -- I became a little more engrossed with what I was doing, a little more conscious of it, a little more wondering what would come out of the pictures. But I am completely surprised. Completely surprised at where we have arrived. I am completely surprised that the file is attracting the attention that it seems to be attracting.

RICHARD DOUD: I have a couple of question here… One is, just how much did the Brady pictures influence you, as the head of this project.

ROY STRYKER: I don't know. Those are very difficult things to say. I don't think I ever should have said "Brady pictures -- Farm Security must be like this." No. No -- I couldn't. There's no answer to that, because if I'm a designer, and I see a piece of design over here, I say, "I'll make my design here, I'll be influenced by this man, I won't copy this man's design (he laughs)." Sure I was influenced. How, and how much, I don't know. And remember, that was a war, and we were in a different kind of war.

RICHARD DOUD: Do you feel a little bit --

ROY STRYKER: Let me interrupt just a minute. I'm much more apt to be influenced by the Hine pictures than I was the Brady pictures; the Lewis Hine pictures. Because they were closer to the intent which we were doing.

RICHARD DOUD: Do you think, though, that the Brady pictures might have given you a sense of the history that the Hine pictures, perhaps, would not have?

ROY STRYKER: No. No. Each in its own way gave me a (?); same thing. But the Hine pictures -- some of the things I saw that he took at Staten Island, and some of the things I saw Brady take, one is more desperate, one is the horrors of war, and the other is entirely different; it portrays something different. One is highly emotional and the other is less emotional -- not with no emotion; each has a very string impact; very strong.

RICHARD DOUD: Well, I'd sort of like to take up this controversial topic now of what did the Project contribute to the art of photography? We didn't really define what we meant by "the art of photography." If you consider art as a discipline, this would mean one thing; if you consider art as perhaps an expression or an extension of the feeling or the emotion of the photographer, this might have a different answer. But whether or not you consider photography as an art, do you feel that the people who were taking pictures after the 1930's fell back upon any of the methods --

ROY STRYKER: Oh sure.

RICHARD DOUD: -- and what methods? How heavily did they lean on what your people did for the FSA?

ROY STRYKER: I think that we were early in a transition and a trend that was going to take place. I think that we were there early. I think that the things that we did -- the small camera, the arranging that we did, and we had to be aware. You see, you must never forget that we came at a time when there was a crisis in our land, there was great problems in our land, a great turmoil and a great -- I mean, upset. And that we were in a period when we were aware. We suddenly had an awareness. And I think at the present time we're not as aware as we were then. I think they may have copied some of our ideas but I think they have failed to get the significant situation as of today as we did then. I think we're a little bit dulled. First of all, I think we're dulled by being more used to the photograph. I think the photograph was new then.

RICHARD DOUD: Do you think perhaps an over-exposure has set in?

ROY STRYKER:I think so.

RICHARD DOUD: That's really hurt --

ROY STRYKER: I think so. Now, you see, I think over-exposure is a very curious thing. As long as man has problems, as long as he has sorrow, as long as he has happiness, as long as he has joy, as long as he has routine; and as long as there's death, and birth -- all these things that make human beings different from the animals, that make life something to be lived and something to be fearful of and something to look forward to -- all those things make great journalism, great paintings. And in the end there will only be good photographers and great photographers, if we're a part of that. That's going to hold. It's always held. It just happened that we've got a new tool to bring these things in. Television can be great so long as it recognizes this. There have been some great things done on radio, because the voices comes to us in the hands of sensitive, intelligent people who have something to say, who want to say something, who have some consciousness of this world. And they'll always be there. But we are, as I said a moment ago, we are dulled because we're getting too much of it, we're getting hacks, we're getting people who have nothing that they want to say. You read that little article there about this town. Right away you begin to get excited about this town. Why? Because it's a nice piece of journalism. But it's a problem -- a dying town.

RICHARD DOUD: You mentioned a couple of time that there are many instances where you feel that photographs are really a detriment rather than an aid.

ROY STRYKER: Sure. Lots of times you don't use photographs. I think we do it time and again -- the photograph has nothing to do. I think there are times when the word is so much more -- is so much better. Look: Our Town (play by Thornton Wilder, first produced in 1930's) was a wonderful piece of presentation, a wonderful piece of drama. We didn't have to have people on the stage. We, each of us, could sit there and have that wonderful experience of making our own scenes, our own stage sets, our own -- we built "our town" for ourselves. It's like reading a wonderful book, and you say, "Oh God, I don't want to look at the movies. I must see that in the movies, because I've built myself a whole set of feelings, and I don't want to look at the movies. I must see that in the movies, because I've built myself a whole set of feelings, and I don't want to have pictures." I got into a terrible controversy with Life one time when I was there for a short time. Somebody came up and said, "There's nothing the camera can't do." I said, "That is unadulterated malarchy. I'm shocked that you should say that. There's times that the camera should never be allowed and you ought to have sense enough not to go ahead with the camera."

RICHARD DOUD: A picture is valuable, then, only when it can give us something better than we can supply ourselves with -- when it can supplement our own imagination, or our own emotions?

ROY STRYKER: Well, you put it one way. I would say I think it's very wonderful when -- very significant, very useful, very important, when -- back to what we've talked about before -- when the photographer, like the good journalist, helps us to take off the waste, take of the hat , take off the unessentials, and there stands stark, exciting, easily done, the thing that was most important about that particular scene. That's what's important. One picture. Ansel Adams has in one of his books the pictures of aspen. It's a beautiful picture. But the relation of those aspens to those backround trees always me. That's landscape, if you will. A lot of people don't get excited like I do. Why? I don't know. But time and time again -- maybe it's a small item, maybe it's a great important thing; maybe it's a small statement, maybe it's an epic statement. No matter what it is -- I see the man, there's a picture of a man with bib overalls and waist overalls -- it's not an important thing -- but they stand with their back in front of . And I'm always rather intrigued with that picture because I know the difference between those two men. The bib overalls represent one type of man doing one thing, and the waist overalls mean something else. There's a very interesting news picture of a child drowned in a little pond in a Massachusetts town. This also got me into a controversy once. And somebody said, "It's too bad that the camera-man didn't get around and take the faces of these people." Let me describe the picture to you: the mother and the father with the little -- the mother, its her child, his child. The father has is arm around her. There's great sorrow and tragedy there; they're dredging the lake for this child. There's a little kid, the little -- twisting his overalls. She's probably -- I don't know. When I saw this picture first, I didn't know all the facts, the facts as they turned out to be. Winding his overalls up on his fingers upset child... Why have taken their faces? What more did you want -- by the tension of that back, of that man with his arm around her, and that little kid twisting his overalls? What more did you need? There was a picture that needed no more words. It did need some words to say. It needed a nice headline: "Dredging for a child in Lake So-and-So." ...had a different headline. I could go on and give you many illustrations. But that to me was a very significant illustration. And, as I say, I got into a big argument with people over that. Because it's too bad they didn't see their effects. You saw the tension in the woman's back, and the husband with his arm around her. What more did you need?

END OF SIDE 1
SIDE 2

(Several minutes of blank tape before dialogue begins)

ROY STRYKER: … see what was going on there. And what we got was not an organized story like the men in the magazines like to say -- "a story." It was a series of pictures which was the life of some quite old-fashioned people who came out of Oklahoma and Arkansas. Who had traditions, practices, the so-called "play-parties" which we like to talk about. Of course, don't happen anymore. The ice cream social, the church meeting, and all those things, and there they were in front and he captured them and brought them back to us.

RICHARD DOUD: This is Piketown?

ROY STRYKER: Yes, Piketown. It was a very interesting experience. Now, this is not Farm Security, this has to be Standard Oil. Esther Bubley went into Texas and found a place call Tomball. She started taking pictures in one small town. She started taking these pictures. She got her first set of contacts back, and she was in the post office, and she took them out and people saw -- many more pictures than we would use, ever. Some woman said, "You must come up to one of our, the meeting where we're playing bridge at the house. I think you'd enjoy the bridge party." Before long the whole town was excited, because what had happened? Esther, with her extreme competence with that 35mm, very unobtrusive -- they didn't realize she was there, she wasn't invading them, she was sort of floating around. And all of a sudden they saw themselves, not unpleasantly, yet with her discernment, with that wonderful technique of her camera, and they said, My God, it's interesting. And they couldn't tell her what to do but each time that they saw the pictures they felt, Gee, that is interesting. That's Mrs. So-and-So, you know that's right, she looks just like that, she always acts like that. Well, Tomball got into the magazine that Esquire put out -- "Small-town USA." They ordered more and more copies. They began to think of themselves as the typical small town of America. University of Texas got a grant of money from the Humble Oil Company and made a study of Tomball as a small town. That was the impact of that in --

RICHARD DOUD: Do you think people really like to see themselves depicted as they are?

ROY STRYKER: Well, if they're not ridiculed, if they're not held up to ridicule, if they are part of the complex. Mrs. So-and-So may say, "Well, that's not my husband." He says, "Well -- ", he's, you know, more good-natured, and he says, "Hell, that's they way I act, looks like me, I guess, I don't know." Sure. A little surprised. But you see that's a group experience, they're all willing to go along. They're not picked out, they're not singled out, they're not being picked out in any way that makes them feel uncomfortable. The whole was in it.

RICHARD DOUD: I think you said before that you feel that if the photographer approaches an individual honestly and perhaps with compassion, these are the things that count.

ROY STRYKER: I think that you can just about photography anybody if you happen to have finesse, but the finesse has to be backed, as you said, by honesty, by the fairness that that guy can except from you.

RICHARD DOUD: I don't know whether this is fair to bring up or not. But I know some of the Brady photographs could be quite shocking in the brutality of the thing. But personally I get a different feeling from a Brady photograph than I do from some of the current shock photography that we see in our more popular magazines today. Why?

ROY STRYKER: I think some of this that you're talking about lacks -- well, let me put it this way: they're striving to get an effect but Brady didn't strive to get anything. This was war, it was there. And they push this thing sometimes.

RICHARD DOUD: You know what I mean -- one of our more popular photographic news magazine not too long ago showed a picture of a man in South Africa whose Volkswagen was machine-gunned by a group of U.N. soldiers and his wife was killed. To me this was not good photography. I thought it was a terrible display of unfeeling exploitation.

ROY STRYKER: I wonder if you couldn't expect a fine writer, a man sensitive with words couldn't have gotten something out that had more impact than that. I think he could have. I think that there were pictures that came out of war with just dead bodies. I think there were other pictures that were done subtlety.

RICHARD DOUD: Is a lot of this perhaps happy accident? Or do you think that --

ROY STRYKER: Most great pictures are the product of -- oh, no, listen -- the accidental factor is very large, very large. And I don't want to -- please, don't misunderstand me, there are very very brilliant, able photographers who know exactly what they want to do. They have the accidental factor of being there at the right time to get it but they know what they're doing. A competent man knows what he's doing. On the other thing, you see, if you were to have the time and go through the new files, and you take them collectively and go through them, you'd come out with a fantastic exhibit. Because the old news photographer always went to the dogfight, and the dogfight was right in front of him. He pointed the camera and by God, there it was. That was an "accident." I don't want to underrate, I don't want to take anything away from that man. He had the courage to go there, he had the courage to sense it. In a certain strike picture, a bunch of guys standing with there backs to the cameraman. The windows are broken -- and they've got lead pipes and clubs in their hands and they're hidden away, all you see is their backs. It was quite a picture. The man knew what he was doing. He "happened" to get there, he saw it. I don't know the photographer, I'd like to know how well he planned in advance but I think he saw and he had to work fast. Cartier-Bresson is terrific. He sees so fast, and gets his camera work so fast. He's unusual. Very little is accidental. He's there. That's an accident. He had to be there at the right time -- that is the great accident factor: You're there. Now quite different from that: Walker Evans' pictures are quite different. They're not the accident, he plans them, he walks around, he looks, and all of a sudden -- his is a composed job. He takes time. Very few of his -- his are like Be Shahn's are not. Ben Shahn is there at the moment, he helps, perhaps, to set up some by his conversation, but he sees the faces, he sees the juxtaposition of faces; a second later it's too late. He had to hit it right. Some of that is accident, but he knows what he's after, he sees -- you see, he sees a whole concept there. Walker walks around and all of a sudden sees -- coming back to my old picture -- the tombstone in the cemetery, the street, the houses. It's an interesting picture, because you know that he planned it. That's not "composed" in the sense that that word is so badly used at times, but he hunts till he finds the right viewpoint, the right place to stand. But he's telling you a sort of social situation. And the woman wanted that picture -- she wanted it for a different purpose but she sensed the importance of the picture. Well, you can go through -- the same thing with Ansel Adams. Ansel Adams photographs our parks and our mountains. Terrific things. Better than --

RICHARD DOUD: Do you think it takes a different type of individual, then, to photograph people and human situations such as perhaps Ben Shahn was better at?

ROY STRYKER: Sure. Certainly. I had two very interesting boys in Pittsburgh. They were entirely different. One boy is never going to do people like the other boy. One man was going to do patterns, structures, design. He's -- but he still gets good pictures. The other boy had -- he "gave off"-- I know, this is silly, like Russell Lee. He gives off in this same sense, you know, he's all right. But he had some feeling like human beings. He'd take man in a steel mill. The first thing you know, in some pictures you had the feeling of the importance -- the photographer for some reason or other made those people feel important; they had dignity. And they sensed this guy could give it to them. Not make them beautiful, not make them look like something they weren't. But he put a dignity into that picture. They responded to him. He didn't do the other things as well as the other boy. When Philip was working for me in Standard Oil -- a refinery is a landscape of pipes, spheres, and one man can do it magnificently. Another man never gets it. And this man -- it's very unlikely that he'll ever go into a refinery and capture some wonderful pictures.

RICHARD DOUD: It takes all kinds!

ROY STRYKER: Certainly. Each picture is useful, each picture is viable, each picture is -- each of them are competent, each of them are ( I hate to use this word) each of them are artists in their way, each of them --

RICHARD DOUD: I'm glad you said that! (both laugh)

ROY STRYKER: All right! All right!

RICHARD DOUD: (still laughing) That concession. Well, I don't know if you'd care to comment on some of the controversial photographs -- the better known controversial photographs of your people. The famous --and the Iowa Madonna --

ROY STRYKER: That wasn't exactly controversial. There's not too much to say. Rothstein had moved to his --from --over to --and cactuses and sparse vegetation. It wasn't dishonesty at all because it was complete honesty. It was a political situation. Newspapers picked it up because we were then going over into a political controversy. Which is a perfectly legitimate, worth-while thing. Thank God that's what democracy is -- a difference of opinion. The result was, there was a stampede, everybody take up the thing and damn us for it. I don't think they even looked carefully. In the end, I think they made something more out of it; it wasn't that important.

RICHARD DOUD: By itself it was a terrific picture.

ROY STRYKER: No. Not a terrific picture. An interesting picture but it wasn't a terrific picture. I don't think it began to even come anywhere near the pictures we had the following -- I don't think -- I think they made a great picture out of it because they made all this fuss. I don't think it was a great picture.

RICHARD DOUD: You could call it infamous rather than famous?

ROY STRYKER: No, I just think they made it a well know picture, let's put it that way. I shouldn't use the word "famous." I just think they made it a very well know picture. I don't think it would ever have had that importance if they hadn't given it a flurry all through the papers because they wanted to raise hell with the Administration's being dishonest. Of course it was dishonest. Maybe what I said, I said it -- didn't realize I'd said it but I guess I did say it. Well, there was a drought, and the hell with it! And I've been quoted on that. I wasn't very smart to have said it that way, but I did, and I said it, and it's out now. There was a drought. Sure he was naïve. Sure he was out of the city; he was moving around; he was almost composing. It were better left alone. We'd have been smarter if we hadn't let those pictures get out. It didn't hurt. There wasn't -- I think if we'd deliberately staged something, with intent -- I think it was too bad that one of our men in the organization labeled the little girl "a tenant Madonna" when she wasn't a mother, and when you put a false statement on that it was unfortunate; didn't do us any good; didn't gain anything by it. It was sort of silly. But we didn't give many of those. So I don't think we should call it that important. But they sure made it important. It was very interesting -- in one of the releases, and I think it's in the set of the things that -- ask Georgia -- one man said, "From this time on, news photographers better be very careful whether they move around to get two views or three views. They may be accused of rigging a picture. The model or the movie actress is out there. They better just take one picture and be satisfied." This was a little cynical crack back at some of this colleagues.

RICHARD DOUD: Well, I think we have discussed the possibilities and some of the problems of a project comparable to the FSA photographic project. I think that you feel that this type of thing might very well be done, if handled right, would be a worthwhile thing. But there are ethnic problems facing anyone trying to do it. We mentioned a few minutes ago that the political problem would be so much greater now than it was before. How do you feel about --

ROY STRYKER: Well, let me add to what I said. Let's just look at one of these. Let's say I want to pick something out that's small that we can walk around it and get our hands on it. It'll only take a few minutes. Suppose that I want to take a section of the Cumberlands -- I think that's a pretty broad thing. I don't think it would be at all difficult, if you had a budget, could be given a reasonable amount of freedom -- I don't think it would be at all difficult to start in at the Cumberlands and come out with a terrific job done. I think I could do it if I were left alone and given the budget. I wouldn't want to pay high salaries, I wouldn't want to pay high expense accounts, I would want to have it reasonably related to the cost of living today. I don't want any fancy frames, I want it a quite project. But I am convinced I could go in with a few photographers, shifting them back and forth. But it would take some money, just a reasonable amount. I imagine that we'd be criticized. I imagine we'd run into opposition, that we'd run into political criticism. But I think that properly handled we could do the project without -- that we'd turn out quite a significant, quite exciting set of pictures. How big? How many? It wouldn't be any 270,000, it wouldn't need to be.

RICHARD DOUD: Do you think that it's the responsibility of the federal government or of a state government or the responsibility of private individuals to take an interest --

ROY STRYKER: Well, Dick, I don't think there's any particular right answer to that. I think it happens to be -- it's not the responsibility of any one group per se. It's the responsibility of some group who wants to do something. It's the responsibility of a State who says, "We've got a problem here, and by george, we'd like to talk about it, we'd like to make people conscious of the things that we face down here in this country. We'd like to do it, and we hope that it would be possible for us to do it thoroughly, honestly, openly, and that we'd get recognition that we'd admitted our problem." Now, this is a problem situation.

RICHARD DOUD: It's a hard thing to get people to do -- admit they have a problem in the first place, you know.

ROY STRYKER: Yes. I think -- I don't think it's too difficult. I think plenty of States -- just recently the Department of Agriculture, I think -- I didn't follow it through, I want to get more of it -- we're talking about what's happening to the youth in the rural areas. In the old days, he went back to farming. Farming was a way of life for him. He's now going to have to head for the cities. What's he going to do when he gets there? How well is he trained for it? What can he do about it? That would be a very interesting project. It's nation-wide. It deals with a pretty tragic group of people, and they're going to get hit like this: "That's you." What do they need? What's their problem like? What do they look like? Where do they come from? What was their home like? What happened? We ought to be able -- it's too bad we can't -- you see, it's one thing to take a set of pictures that are put in front of us; there's also something else -- the journalistic job of then building the story. So the word has a heavy burden to carry here. The picture is the face of the kids, the picture is like this story here. The town is declining because there is no farming, and the kids are not staying in town. They're moving out, and the old folks are left behind. There's all kinds of things to do there. So you can make -- you can take any one section, you don't have to go far. You can take three sections. There's a very interesting story about these people that could be done. There was a project. Should the Department of Agriculture do it? I don't know. You can do it news-wise, make one story. It would be nice if you had a lot of pictures, a lot of stories coming in, in various ways. You see, that's the thing we need -- to see into these -- once we've done a superior job, then it's well if we could get it seen by a lot of people. Or, maybe we can do it over again in many places, so it begins to have proliferation, it comes up, and up, and up. And so you see it here, and you see it there, you see it -- it's variants of the same thing. It's freshness if you see it three times but it's also a lot of factors -- it can be done. It needs someone who has a sense of how to do it. It needs photographers -- it needs more than anything else, photographers who are excited, who believe in something. A photographer sat here the other night, a very competent photographer -- Cal Bernstein. He's doing advertising, he's making money, making a living. We talked about this because -- "I wish you or somebody else could set some things going that I could participate in, something I believed in. It's as simple as that: something I believe in, something I want to do because I believe in it. I do nice picture of toothpaste. Nyanh! I believe in it because it pays me. My God, I want to do something else, to please me, get out, help do something, make something." He's very --

RICHARD DOUD: Is this part of the reason for the success of what you people did? Did you have -- did you think you people had this?

ROY STRYKER: Oh sure, oh absolutely. Of course. Absolutely. We believed, we knew, we saw, we sensed we were a part of this perception, part of coming in contact, part of seeing a world -- a country of ours in turmoil, a country in trouble. We weren't beaten. But all we had to fear "is fear itself." They were getting away from that. And people -- sure, they were downtrodden, beaten, but -- land found people that were off their land, but, damn it all, if you watch those captions and look at some of the pictures, by God, some of those guys said, "We still can carry on." So those are the things we found. We were part as subtly perceiving by coming, by facing it. We saw ourselves -- you know, sometimes it's well for us all, a family to see itself with problems, instead of everything easy. All of a sudden there's cohesiveness, they're pulled together suddenly because they have to -- they're like cattle suddenly attacked by the wolves, the cows all circle around and the calves all come to the middle. We all have to face that. And I think that's what happened. Life isn't all a series of pools, and television sets. My God, there's some trouble in the world. Maybe that's what we need. That's what we thought. And we believed. And we belonged to our organization and a President who was trying to give hope and faith. We belonged to an organization that -- in a strange way, that Farm Security itself was a very interesting organization. You'd be surprised today -- it's almost like a club, an organization. If you belong to that, you belong to something special. Still, a man -- I'll bet you there are more people in the Farm Security sharing a respect, sharing an administration, sharing a warmth over the success of this. Even though at the time they may have been a little mad because we didn't take more pictures of the rehabilitation plans. But there again -- I bet you if we do a good picture of (?) you'd be surprised at the number of men want it. But by God, we were part of that. I'm sure of it. Because we were all part of a very interesting program, of a very interesting time. And our photographers were more knowledgeable. They weren't interested in going out and just holding their camera up and shooting, They knew what they were doing. It's where people think they were.

RICHARD DOUD: Do you think that some of the problems facing us today are similar enough to the problems of the 30's -- although more localized, but the general approach you used then could be followed today?

ROY STRYKER: Yes. It would be harder to do. Yes. It would be harder to do. You'd have to be very sure that you don't get people that are tired. People who have been involved in photography to the point where they have to turn -- push so it got thrown out of focus, instead of being straightforward. Sometimes it's well to say, "Look, this man is hungry. You don't have to show a disturbed, confused picture, out of focus, to show that he's hungry. This -- man -- is -- hungry! PERIOD." Or, you can say, "The trouble is, too many of us have never had an empty belly as this man did." In as simple language as that. The simplicity of photography sometimes is as valuable and as important and as ruthless and as devastating as simplicity of words. That's where we're making some of our mistakes today. A lot photography I don't think is going any place. It lacks directness, and simplicity, and honesty. We're interested in technique. We're interested in twisting the camera -- listen: there are things today you can do with a camera that are fantastic. But you still have got to make them work for the direct, simple, the obvious, the honest thing. The terms are better. It's as simple as that. We're getting so involved, sometimes -- the kids get so involved in their cameras. Pictures I've set in -- my gosh, when they put a television set on the rim of the Grand Canyon and make a double page spread of it, then write a silly caption, like Holiday Magazine did. Ri-diculous! It's a corrosion, it's an erosion of technique that's --

RICHARD DOUD: Is this partly the fault of the public for not insisting on -

ROY STRYKER: Oh-h-h, there's that to it. There's all -- a bunch of tired editors. Don't know what the hell is in there. They're tired, they don't -- also part of a tired period right now. I guess we have too much money to spend; to affluent.

RICHARD DOUD: Any solution?

ROY STRYKER: Well, I'm not sure. Mr. Steinbeck had a point: he'd hate to see a depression come back but maybe a little dose of Depression might be helpful. How can you get a little and not have too much? I don't know. I wouldn't want to see it come back like it was. How could we get people that they could believe in? The CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) was a terribly important thing. And a lot kids went out of the depressed areas, bad conditions, the slums, didn't know where they were going; and they went out. And many a city boy never went back to the city. "Because I saw trees, I planted, I did something worthwhile. I want to go back and do it." I think it was wonderful -- the CCC was one of the most important things -- it brought a lot of youth a purpose. This is a difficult world today -- we're in a terribly difficult world. The turmoil of the world today is very hard for anybody. So what do we get? By television, we sit and watch murders, or ... It's a difficult, difficult world. I'm afraid I have too small an intellect. I'm just a small human being. I don't know that I can answer your questions.

RICHARD DOUD: Well, I want to thank you for trying. I appreciate your comments very much. It's been a pleasure to discuss this with you.

END OF INTERVIEW

Interview with Roy Stryker
Conducted by Richard Doud
At the Artist's home in Montrose, Colorado
June 13, 1964

Preface

The following oral history transcript is the result of a tape-recorded interview with Roy Stryker on June 13, 1964. The interview took place in Montrose, Colorado, and was conducted by Roy Stryker for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Interview

TAPE 1

RICHARD DOUD: This is an interview with Roy Stryker at his home in Montrose, Colorado, June 13, 1964. The interviewer is Richard K. Doud. Well, Roy, a lot has happened since we were together last October and I'm hoping that now we'll have a chance to clear up a lot of point that we missed then, and fill in a lot of the gaps that have come up. I was hoping I could have a chance to go back to my first question then and get you to talk a little about your background and how this whole thing originally started with you.

ROY STRYKER: All right. I think that I would like to go back a little farther than you indicated in your question on my background. I think it might be interesting to know what of home I was in. Mainly, what I am trying to do for you is to say why did I get involved in photography when I wasn't a photographer.

RICHARD DOUD: Good.

ROY STRYKER: I grew up in a home where we had the old stereoscopes, the old stereo pictures with the thing you picked up and held in your hand, with two eye pieces. We had the collection of what is know as Cabinet Photos, pictures of the mines, picture of the mountains and so on. They were around. We had a Montgomery Ward or Sears Roebuck catalogue, I don't know which. We had the Department of Agriculture yearbooks. We had bulletins. And I became a reader. In fact, I had some eye trouble when I was a kid and I was supposed not to read. My brothers many times had to go down and find me in a corner somewhere where I'd got a book of fairy stories of something else about the local library here in town. I was reading a lot. So I did have that environment of curiosity and it was encouraged. My father's attitude was, get an education. My older brother had been an assistant in the superintendent of education's office in Kansas and he sent many of the sample books on Greek mythology and things of that kind. So I had a lot of things to read. I merely want to emphasize that I seemed to like photographs, I enjoyed those old stereoscopes; I enjoyed the comic ones, and there were many comic ones, I enjoyed the serious ones, I took a few of my travels around, because, as you know, there were sets came through on Rome, there was also a set on "Josh Billings Goes to Town". All right. Then, I wanted to be a chemist and I was in hopes of going back to the University of Kansas to take a course -- get my chemistry with a man who later started the Mellon Institute. In high school I devoted most of my spare times to the chemistry laboratory. A very smart principal of the school probably knew that I knew more chemistry than he did, and he gave me a free hand around the place. I did not get there because he encouraged me to go to the Colorado School of Mines. He wanted one of his students in a state institution. I don't know what my scholarship was, I suppose ten dollars. Anyway, at the end of the first year, some eye trouble, and lack of funds. And I didn't think I could go back, particularly on account of the eyes. I went back and my brother, the one just next older than myself, was interested in picking up some land and getting into cattle. It interested me. It wasn't long before he and I had accumulated a couple of thousand acres of grassland. And for seven years I particularly looked after the cows. In the winter tine I grub staked out, worked for a cattle outfit or a mining outfit or some other place. I bring this up, incidentally, because I didn't make much money in those times but I developed a very rich experience, a rich background. The time spent in the hard rock mines up around Ophir, Colorado, working down on the end of the Uncompahgre Divide when they were getting uranium, fernatite, not uranium, when the ore was going back to Chicago for experimental work. All those things gave me a feeling of a lot of different aspects of life. The rumor has got around that I was a cowboy. Well I wasn't a very good one. Like the old man I used to work for winters, he said, "Roy, I wouldn't look very good at a rodeo but I can sure set my rope on my own steer, if I see him." I suppose I was that way and I'm going to have to disagree with a lot of people that I was a cowboy. I had boots, and I wore a bobtailed levi jumper, and I had a pair of chaps; but that didn't make you a rodeo cowboy and you would never qualify today. All right, that's just a little incidental. I had time to read, I carried stuff around in my chaps, in my saddle pocket but I didn't let anybody around here catch me reading it because that would have been frowned upon by the cow punchers. I might have been taken out and given the proper treatment. But I did read all the time. I was an incessant reader. The War came along. I got into the service. My buddies were -- one of my closest buddies was a professor of botany. Some of the others were teachers, one was a dentist. And I guess there was a restlessness. I was still in France and I decided when I got out at New York I was going to go to Columbia. They wouldn't let us out. So they brought me on to Fort Leavenworth. That was in the winter. I came back home in time for the early spring, got my saddle horse out, and the old dog was there. And by spring time I was back on the hill. The pull was very strong. I wasn't quite sure whether I was going to go back to school or not. There was that big urge. The second semester was on and I decided that I would go back to the Colorado School of Mines again. I had gone there, as I said, not because I thought that was the place where I wanted to go but because my professor talked me into it. In the meantime I ran across -- well, that summer I was helping one of my cattle outfit -- a sheep man nearby. And one of the old gals that was in high school came up for the Fourth of July. To make the story short, I decided that I was in love. I thought I had been a woman-hater. I decided that I was going to get married and I needed a wife. The restlessness was still there, still dormant. In some strange way, without her having put it into words, I think she offered that incentive. We decided to go back to New York to school. My brother was disturbed. We sold out. And I had around six thousand dollars coming to me for my seven years' work. The slump of '21 came along. Along late in the summer when we were getting closer and closer to marriage time, and time to go, old Larry Finch, the old sheep man who had bought our acreage and our cattle got a hold of me and said, "Roy, I have no money, things are very bad, as you know. Why don't you take your share of the land and cattle back?" I have some pride, or vanity, I should say, not pride, it was vanity, and I said I was going to New York and I couldn't very well face not going. My wife and I decided to go. She had been teaching school and she had saved some money. So we got as far as Denver. And I had got -- not like they had after World War II -- but I had gotten some kind of veteran's compensation for a very bad case of flu that I had in Europe. I don't know that I was justified but at least I wangled it. When I got to Denver they had fouled it up and I didn't have it; they couldn't transfer it. We looked at our money. We had enough to buy the tickets. So we headed East. Got to Buffalo and I explained to my wife that no young married couple can afford not to go to Niagara Falls. Late in the afternoon we went up to the falls and we came back. She got the conductor to hold the train while I got the bags, and we headed for New York. I was bug-eyed, country boy going in to New York, just couldn't think of anything else. She later confided that it was the bluest night that she ever spent in her life, with no money, and I was a damn fool sitting there starry-eyed looking down on the great city. We arrived. I hadn't the vaguest idea what to do or where to go. I saw something "Travelers Aid". And again my vanity said, "That's a woman's job, ask where we can go." They Murray Hill Hotel at that time was down the street a short distance from Grand Central. WE could have walked it, I could have carried the bags. I knew you were supposed to ride a cab, so we went in a cab. This story I didn't tell for longs years but I'll tell it now. In my complete greenness, I saw a man reach for my bag and I leaned over and said, "Get your damn hands off." He said, "I'm taking you to your room." We got in there, I had a shower bath, we settled back, and all of a sudden it dawned on me, what the hell do we do for money tomorrow and the next day? I had met a young minister at Iliff Seminary in Denver and he was a New Yorker…I might digress just for a moment and bring in another name. At the Colorado School of Mines there was a man by the name of George Collins who represented four church boards. I was sore at the Army and resentful at the Army and he had -- he introduced me to the New Republic, the Nation, Rauschenbusch, the very famous theology from Rochester Seminary, a liberal, probably almost a Socialist. So I got a taste of that and decided I was going back to Columbia. That was really where I got my start to go back. I wanted to go back to Columbia. And I had met this man from Iliff who needed, who would like to have some help in some boys' clubs he was running. So I got some of the chaps from the Colorado School of Mines, football players and others, to go and become coaches and counselors for the boys clubs. This Mr. Collins arranged the thing. He was smart enough -- gave a course in economics -- I told him I wanted to take the course. He asked me why I wanted it. I said, I could probably make more money. Anywa, I think it was a very important -- meeting him was a very important -- part of this, my life. It was the thing that turned me from my chemistry to the social sciences. So when the young theologian said, when you go back to New York City why don't you contact Union Settlement which was a part of Union Seminary -- on the East Side, they might just have a place for you. So that night when we were thinking about it I said I guess I'd better see if I can find their name; at least I knew enough how to use a telephone. So I called and the assistant head director said, "We've been looking for you, you'd better come up." I didn't even know how to get to a subway but I got up there and we had a job. They had a place for us. Meantime Wills William Sweet, a financier in Denver, a banker, head of the Y.M.C.A. there, and a very, very liberal man, was in New York. He was there on the Tammany Convention. I went to see him and he said, "Roy, I don't like to loan money to boys. I've lost all my friends because they get the money and never pay it back and they always duck down alleys. Now I'll loan you some money. It'll have to be paid back if it's only ten cents every few months, but you've got to pay it back. We got started, we went to the Settlement and got under way there. And again, one of those strange experiences that contributed to my background, all these things were contributors. I got a chance to live near the markets. The City was there at my doorstep. And I spent more time running around down the back streets seeing what was going on that I should have. But I did. That one year at the Settlement I thought was about enough. I didn't like social work. There were some things about it that didn't suit me. I was basically a radical. I was basically from a Socialist home. And there were a lot of things that I didn't think they were doing as they should have. So the second year we moved up near the University. And that was the end of Settlement work. But the Settlement work was an imprint.

RICHARD DOUD: I can see where it would be.

ROY STRYKER: Very definitely. Just the same as the mining and the cow industry, and all those things give you a lot of information -- not through -- but about a lot of things that are very useful later. My first year up there I ran into Tugwell. He was an instructor, he was giving courses in Utopian Socialism and various things. I haven't forgotten yet the time I had to write a paper. He said, "If I don't like it, you'll get a D." And he said, "If it isn't on time I'll give you a D." I was late but the paper came back. It said "You're late but I'm giving you an A minus, but I'm going to give you an A because it's typed and that's progress." So I took several of his courses. Tugwell was a very curiou teacher, a magnificent teacher when he felt like it. But he got this paper that I had written and he said, "I wish you'd expand it." I found myself taking over three sessions of the class reading it, because Tugwell didn't want to come to class. But one of his students said, "I don't care how many times Tugwell doesn't come if he'll just come often enough. Because when he gives one of those lectures I flunk out." That was my introduction to Tugwell; I bring it in to you at this stage of the game. I had another very fine professor, William Weld, who had been a missionary -- he was an economist -- in the Near East and India. He had a great deal of interest in visual things. And I found myself making charts, helping him out. Also in my work in economics there I got interested in the bulletin board. Why, God knows. We were talking about trade associations and monopolies and the librarian was an interesting guy and he said, "Why don't you put some of these things on the bulletin board?" So I'd go through the papers, cut this out, make a paste-up and first thing you know there'd be a presentation on monopolies which I'd collected. So I kept that up. Then we that we could make a little money by making statistical charts. Mrs. Stryker and I worked at this for people. We made them for class use. They decided they wanted them so that was a business. We made part of our money that way. And I suppose that was a contribution to my visual interest. When I landed in Columbia I was an older guy; I had a lot of credits from the Colorado School of Mines. I went over to see what they would accept. Well, the man there said, "Are you planning to go ahead in physics or chemistry?" I said, "No." He said, "Oh, well then we can give you a lot more than this." But I went for all purposes a freshman. I didn't get hazed and I didn't wear a cap; and I said, "Try it and I'll get the hell beaten out of me but three of you guys will get it!" That period was one of Columbia's most interesting times. They were reorganizing. They had what is known as the famous contemporary history, the contemporary civilization courses. The freshman year it was philosophy, art, morals. I had a wonderful professor by the name of John Coss, bachelor, philosopher, marvelous teacher; and I think that class had a terrific effect on me. I remember one day when Coss said, "Stryker, Roy, I want to ask you a question. What are you doing tomorrow morning?" Saturday. Nothing. "Could you meet me at five o'clock at my apartment over on Fairmount?" "Yes." We went to the markets and it was quite a trip. I saw peaches from Chile. I saw a lot of things. It was the start of a very strange friendship. But I was also very obstreperous. And I always started an argument in class, because I had great chips on my shoulders on both sides. As I said, I resented the Army, I resented a lot of things. I can remember so well starting fights that I wasn't bright enough to carry off my end of it. There was a lad there was a real sharpie and he loved to argue so he'd pick it up and carry it on. One day Professor Coss said, "The New Republic and the Nation are bad magazines." And I was so brash as to speak up and say, "Doctor Coss, I resent that. I don't think that's the right kind of education." So for some two months he got marked copies of the paper, but still -- as I say -- I bring up Coss' name because he again taught me to look for experience, to savor the things with a new aspect. It was an organized approach. Then, the second year I went into the second orientation year which was economics, mainly, and I got my degree ahead of most of those fellows and they gave me an instructorship. And that was really quite a raise. I look back with a good deal of interest on that period. It's dangerous looking back, you know, always. I remember so well going to an instructor, a man who had been one of my instructors in a course in economics, and I would say to him -- he shared his office with me -- "Did you read that article this morning in The Times about Federal Reserve System?" He said, "Look, I 'm teaching economics and I haven't got time to read the paper." Then I blew up and I said…I forget his name -- I'll get it -- "Well," I said, "Maybe you haven't got the time but as I remember the classes I had, you could afford to do a little of this because you've got the dullest classes I've ever known." He said, "Let me give you some advice. If you want a doctor's you'd better tend to your economics and don't worry about contemporary history." I think that marks the difference of what my -- I never was cut out to become an economist, I was not cut out to get a doctor's, I was not ever going to be a scholar. And I ran these classes because I carried to them my interests, I carried to them a superficial background, but I also want to mention that Tugwell was primarily, basically a descriptive economist. So often he said in his classes, "How can you talk about the economic system if you don't know what a bank looks like? How can you do this if you haven't some idea of what -- how to describe this institution; not how it works, but principally you have to know what it looks like. You ought to know what the horse looks like before you dissect it later on, because it doesn't look like a caterpillar." And I don't think that that changed me. I think it just fitted something. So I found more and more that my classes were -- I regaled them, I said, Have you read this, have you read that. I guess they learned. I'm sure they did because the classes were popular. I found so often that bright boys from the city -- they had been to Europe -- I remember asking one of them, did you ever get off the subway as you came and go around? He didn't know what the slums were. I found myself borrowing photographs and digging -- that was part of this business of putting up these exhibits. I took a newspaper clipping into class. And again I'm sure this was all part of my direction and my formation -- where I was headed. It wasn't long before I was so taken with Professor Coss' idea of taking me on a tour that I said, "Hey, why don't you guys first go down on the lower East Side?" One wealthy kid said, "You know, it's funny I've lived around here all my life and have never been down to the Bowery in my life." So I found myself taking trips, taking these groups down. First, because I liked it, secondly, maybe I was lazy, maybe it was the way to do my teaching, I don't know. Anyway my education went on and on. I did the third hour. In the College a student was given three credits. In the graduate school he got two credits. And he was allowed to take certain courses in the graduate school. Some of them took labor problems. Labor problems was what I thought I wanted to do, the field of labor problems. A very wonderful professor, her name was Doctor Seegar, taught it. And I became -- I handled the third hour. And the third hour was the quiz section. So they read and did that. And this propensity to have trips came in and I said, "How'd you like to go down and go to a labor meeting?" We went to a labor meeting. But I noticed my group was growing and I looked around and we had some graduate students. And one night one of my labor friends said, "Why don't you bring some of those boys down to the picket line? We could use them." And graduates and undergraduates were on the picket lines. So my professor, head of the department at that time, William Wells, who did a lot for me, called me in and said, "Roy, are you getting along with Seegar in the third hour?" "Oh, fine!" "What do you do?" "The usual, quiz them." "Anything else?" "No." "You talk about outside things?" "Yes, oh yes, I've been taking them on trips." "Oh, you have! That's nice. Where do you take them?" I told him. "Just the undergraduates, of course?" "No, there have been some graduates coming lately." "Oh! Yes, well let me tell you something. You're planning to take your doctor's with us, aren't you? Well, you'd better watch out because Seegar is sore." "Why?" "Because the rumor has gone around among the graduates that you ought to be teaching the whole course. You're a damn sight more interesting." "So," he said, "You'd better look out!" Then later on Tugwell became head of the department. Among the classes I was giving, he knew I was taking groups down to visit in my economics class. That was first year economics. I took some of his boys -- I was helping him in an advanced course -- and I took some of those boys to a couple of places. And one day he said, "You know, why don't we give a course here, why don't we give a sort of laboratory course in conjunction with our contemporary civilization, give it in the sophomore year, economics and government?" So it was organized, the trips, and I was put in charge of the trips. Every member of that sophomore class had to go on six visits. And basically I am organizer. I like to organize. This was wonderful. So they had a choice. There were certain requirements they had to go to. And this was right up my alley because I could see more of the city and I loved it, and I didn't have to use brains that I didn't have. I didn't have to be the bright scholar. And I taught right along as I had always taught. So we had trips to the Federal Reserve Bank and we had trips around the Island. We got the Pennsylvania to take tours for us on their tugboats. We went to Bellevue, and we went to the morgue, we went to clothing factories, we went out in the country to the famous Walker Garden farm where they made certified milk, and milked the cows on a roto-electric. I'll tell you a side story on that. One of the instructors said, "My God, Roy, you're sure wrecking our students around here. One man said, "Why is there a farm problem when farmers have got fancy machines to milk cows?" So, it was a rough job. We finally had the 57 varieties. We had an enormous number of trips. They all had to take them. And I did most of them, although I had a couple of student assistants. Again, I was seeing the world, my curiosity was being satisfied and sharpened. I had a wonderful colleague at that time, a man, Joseph McGoldrick ,who was a New York City boy, a little, short, sawed-off Irishman, one bad eye that he had lost because his father stuck a Christmas tree, a piece of steel, in it. But Joe was a real New Yorker and would go with me anyplace, night or day. So I had that double advantage of having a man like that who would help me find places I didn't know about. And the trip courses went on. Then Tugwell called me in one day and said, "We're doing a book called American Economic Life, and I want it illustrated. Would like to -- we'll pay you for the job or you cab be a joint author." I thought about it. I said, "I want to be a joint author; I'll let you do the writing, though." I never wrote anything although I read proof for them and chased down information. Well I spent a lot of time on the illustrations for that book. It's around, you'll see it. By the way, I think I can get a copy up to the Archives. Mrs. Stryker did the charts for it. I did the research work. I hunted pictures. As you look at it today I'm a little ashamed of the layout, the treatment of the pictures, because the publisher figured that he'd tear the picture down to postage stamp so he wouldn't have to take up space. But it's a very interesting book. It was one more year that I didn't even work on my doctor's. Then we did a revision of it. Another year I didn't -- but I had a great education. Now Mr. Tugwell did me one of the greatest services he ever did -- two things for me. Number one, he said, I wan you to get a copy -- I'll get it for you -- of J. Russell Smith's North America. It's one of the famous books on economic geography. Extremely well-illustrated, wonderful captions. He said, "I think this ought to be the model for the job we're going to do." So I went straight to the library, read books, looked. And that was my first introduction to visual materials. And it was a fantastic experience and I, that I can never get over. The book came out. I had my name on it. I wrote nothing; but I must say I am proud of the job of illustration that we did. As I say, it came out I think in a second edition, a revised edition to be made for the schools, but by this time the witch hunt was on. There was some material that was too liberal and it was never used much more.

RICHARD DOUD: Well, Roy, can I ask a question?

ROY STRYKER: Yes.

RICHARD DOUD: In illustrating this book did you use pictures that had already been taken, or did you people take pictures?

ROY STRYKER: No, no. The pictures had already been taken. I used those that had been taken. It was here that I met Lewis Hines. Bourke White was in Cleveland taking pictures for one of the big banks. She was taking pictures of industry. Tugwell had found them and given them to me. Soon afterwards, when she first came to New York I met her, I went down to the station, my friendship with her grew. I met Lewis Hines. It was one of my great experiences. I was already used to The Survey and the Survey Graphic: Lewis Hines -- that was probably -- had the impact that I never realized how great it was going to be on me. And the book was illustrated. My experiences down at Harcourt, Brace I said were fascinating. They'd never let them get by. "Oh," they say, "We can cut this a little smaller." But we were proud of the book. But it was a great experience. It had to be revised and so I spent another year doing it, and enjoying it. But I was supposed to be getting a Doctor's. I never even got my Master's. Tugwell called me in one day. Sometimes in life a real kick in the pants is the greatest thing that can happen to you. He said to me, "Do you want a Doctor's?" Well, of course I had to say, my tradition, why I was there, "I suppose I do." "Are you sure?" "No, I'm not." Well he said, "Damn it, why don't you go and do what you want to do and forget it?" There was a lull, because I suddenly waked up to the fact that I was being told I wasn't scholar and I wasn't going to be. I thought I was. I walked along the Hudson, not with, by any stretch of the imagination, any attempt to commit suicide, for I'm a coward; but I walked and thought. I said, "My God, I am a failure." But, being the stupid guy I am, I soon forgot all about that. And it was very shortly after that that Tugwell went to Washington, and said, "Why don't you come down?" I went down. Oh, that summer I was teaching in Columbia. I was teaching over in Brooklyn and he said, "Why don't you come on down and do some summer work?" I went down and went to work for the Agricultural Adjustment Administration. And I worked for a wonderful, wonderful old guy by the name of Reuben Brigham. Reuben had been with Extension Service and he was sort of in charge of this visual department. Reuben was a great, long, lean Lincolnesque type of a guy. I'd go down for, say, a week at a time, and then even during the winter I went down. After I was teaching I took advantage to go down and spend some time there. Exhibits had to be made for the three A's. And I would try to wangle it out of the exhibit division. And a lot of things had to be done. This summer, incidentally, another thing, I have to keep coming back to Tugwell. He was staying alone. His wife and kids were gone, so he stayed with me. Tugwell, by the way, is not a very communicative person. Very quiet. One of the things I learned early in my career with him was not to bother him with a lot of unnecessary talk. If he didn't want to talk we didn't talk. We never went in and asked him, "How am I doing?", or, "What do I do?" You were expected to do it. But in the course of this I was thinking back on my days at Columbia when I was still teaching there. I used to think -- again let me digress just slightly on this -- I used to be disturbed because my classmates so often were the bright boys from Lincoln School and I said, "Oh my God, those boys are so much brighter, have so much better background than I've ever had." Yet at times I was shocked at how little they knew about the country. They didn't know a disc harrow from the steeple of a church. Particularly of things rural they didn't seem to know anything; and something came to my mind: wouldn't it be interesting to have a sort of a picture book on American agriculture? And one night I talked to Tugwell about it and he said, "Well it isn't a pictorial history of agriculture; it would be a pictorial sourcebook." Well, that stirred me up. So I spent all my evenings I could get into the extension files. It wasn't long before I had this book in mind. I was still teaching one more year. This, by the way, was where Rothstein came in. I went back up to Columbia and I began to write outlines for this thing and I carried it in my pocket, always with me, on little 3 x 5 slips of paper. And my pockets were bulging with notes I made. I ran across Rothstein in some way and he was using a camera and I wanted to copy things out of old magazines, early journals, old agricultural journals. And Rothstein -- he was the National Youth Project boy. The first thing I knew everybody who had a National Youth assignment was given to me. So I had about twelve of them going. And Rothstein was taking pictures for me, making copies out of the library. We assembled, by the way,…the thing moved along and Harry Carman, who was professor of history and later became dean of the college, and Carman, Tugwell and I, they were the masterminds, and we decided to try to get this book out, to be called The Pictorial Sourcebook of American Agricultural History. We needed a grant of money, so we went to the university of Columbia Press and decided it would be a good idea to talk to Nicholas Murray Butler. We had a conference with Nicholas Murray Butler and he regaled us with the time that he spent with Theodore Roosevelt out in the Bad Lands. He went into his files and brought out a series of stereoscopes taken at that time, and we had to see those. They were wonderful. But we didn't get any information where we could get money or anything else. Alexander Legg of International Harvester had just recently passed away before that, and there was a fund, a foundation, called the Alexander Legg Foundation or Fund. So Nicholas Murray Butler said, "I will try to see if I can formulate something." So on my next trip to Washington I shared the office with a man who was a sort of assistant to Milton Eisenhower, who was then -- that was the Information Division. The man was Jack Fleming who is now with Dave Lawrence's magazine. And I arrived at my desk down in his office. He said, "I have an interesting letter for you." And there was Nicholas Murray Butler's letter to Mr. Ross saying, "It's a great idea, and you ought to do it." The book never got done. I collected some three thousand pictures, they were placed in the file in Harry Carman's office, and then it wasn't too long after that till the Farm Security was about to be born. We didn't know when it was. Professor Tugwell's assistant, a secretary if you will, was Grace Falke, who was his secretary at Columbia. She later became Mrs. Tugwell and became a factor in the development of that file, which I shall have occasion to mention to you later. I remember sitting in the office a few times listening to those two people plus three or four more, talking about it. Tugwell said, "Why don't you come down?" He said, "You may not make much money, we may both be out on the street, but we can drink our soup together." I went back to Columbia. There was resentment on the part of my old friend, John Coss, at my going into any other study. He resented a lot of his students going to the New Deal. He didn't like the New Deal. And he gave me the devil. I went back to Tugwell and asked him two or three times. I needed reassurance and Tugwell didn't take kindly to having to live your life for you. He expected you to be a mature guy. And he said, "Well, damn it, make up your mind. If you want to come, come. If you don't, don't. I just want to tell you one thing. You may do far more education here than you'll ever do if you stay at Columbia." So the decision was made. And I went back to this wonderful old guy, John Coss, and I told him. It was in the evening and he said, "We're having dinner together. Now, all right. That's fine. Now let's forget it and quit quarreling." Later on, after we'd worked for a period of time, we had a lot of negatives, a lot of pictures, already collected, confused, not organized, he cam down (this is a very curious story, a sort of footnote) and Coss looked at them and said, "My God, you have to get these negatives out and get them copied, these people will steal them from you, they'll wreck them." He then became my mentor to be sure we held these things. When the thing was ready to go I was supposed to move down for my job. I had developed corneal ulcers suddenly, I was still teaching, and I wore my black patch for so many months while I was still teaching. I then followed that with iritis which was a terrible mess that nowadays would be easy to handle -- all these things with antibiotics. So I came down telling Tugwell I thought I had better resign, I couldn't be of much use. Again I got one of Tugwell's terse statements that had an effect on my life. He said, "Why in the hell don't you go out and walk around a little? If you can't read, maybe it will do you good to think, but don't resign." And by the time I got there I had to through some treatments, was going to have my tonsils out and one thing after another. When I got through with that it was all under way, they already had it organized and set up. My job description was there but I wasn't there fill the place. Pare Lorentz had come down to do the movies. Tugwell, for some reason -- sometime I wish some way, somehow, we could get out of Tugwell what did he really think. I don't know, I'll never know, but some time maybe he'll say what he thought. Maybe he didn't know what he thought. I don't know. Anyway, he wanted movies. I'm getting this a little bit mixed up now but I think it will be all right to put it in now. I was supposed to be head, chief of the Historical Section, to gather the documents because Tugwell, like Ickes and others, had a sense of his importance. It's better to have the records now. But I was late getting there. He wanted -- why did he want movies? He wanted pictures but didn't think they were as important as they later turned out to be. He brought in a very woman who made platters, (radio was strong), documentary platters, very wonderful ones. They ought to be found. I hope they haven't been destroyed, my God, I hope they're around. But I'm afraid they're gone. Documentary platters that went out and were played on little radio stations out in sections on the Depression, on the farm problem, on the people. It was a very fascinating thing. And Pare had made his famous "The Plow that Broke the Plains". He sort of took over my place. But when I finally got there something had happened. Different places were already in photography. We had a thing called Suburban Resettlement. It was the famous Green Belt towns. We had two or three other divisions and they were already setting up their photographic operations. It was a sad experience. I didn't think it was going to work. I went over to Suburban Resettlement. Carl Mydans was there. John Fisher was over there working. He is now editor of Harper's. A very curious group of people. They were doing reports involving the experimental farm, involving the Green Belt. Carl Mydans was there. Carl had become involved with 35 millimeter and a man by the name of Bob Thorpe, or his name at that time was Bob Schmuck. And he was in charge of the division. He changed his name later. He went from there to New York and…But a man named Wallace Richards was the assistant to a man named Lampsl. Richards -- later I ran across him out in Pittsburgh. That's another story I'll have to tell some other time. But here was Carl out there photographing around the Green Belt background, which was urban living with some space, and also at the experimental farm. And they probably produced two of the most expensive books ever made, layouts, they were never printed but there were these great volumes. Thorpe, or Schmuck, had been in Europe; he had gotten the feeling of the German technique with the camera, the new magazines, the new layouts, the new format, but particularly the wonderful angles of the camera, looking up, looking down, looking through. And Carl was involved in that. I was greeted, "How are you?" Is there anything we can do for you?" "Sure." "Let us know." There's another…I went over to one of our units, the engineers, and they wanted a Leica so they could take pictures of the buildings before and after -- the barn, shed, when it was worked out. I went to another place and they wanted Leicas because they wanted to take the client, the rehabilitation unit, so they could take the clients in their old clothes and after they were rehabilitated. I went back pretty, pretty discouraged and pretty blue. I see Rex and Miss Falke was there, and I said, "Rex, I think it's ditched. I don't think you're going to get anything at all out of it." "Why?" I told him my experiences. I said, "The damned engineers want to buy Leicas, and they shouldn't have them. They should have box cameras." I said, "It will cost you some money -- a lot of money." He didn't say any more to me. Oh, John Franklin Carter was head of Information; that was another piece of luck. A very able guy who was very busy, who let me alone. And, as you already know, because you read my job description -- which lots of people didn't know -- I was under the direct supervision of the Administrator attached to the Information Division. That came in very handy later on. It saved our life too. But J. Franklin left us alone because he was busy with other things. So I had a good deal of free wheeling. I didn't really at that moment need to be under a director but it was nice. So practically unbeknownst to me J. Franklin said, "I want you to come to a meeting in my office." There I sat in the office with the heads of the units of the various places that had charge of photography. J. Franklin Carter read an administrative order: "As of today, all photographers, all cameras, all negatives, everything to do with this, will be transferred to the Divison of Information." Then they were frantic, and that was the changeover. I must admit to you that I didn't know for sure what my job was, except to collect the documents. It was a logical thing. I had never had a formal course in history all the time I was at Columbia but I was a historian. And my title was Chief of the Historical Section. Tugwell's only advice to me, only direction to me -- he never said, "Take pictures." He said, "We need pictures." He never said how to take them. He said, "Remember," -- and this is the only thing that I can remember -- "remember that the man with the holes in his shoes, the ragged clothes, can be just as good a citizen as the man who has the better shoes and the better clothes." Now I must go back to my Pictorial Sourcebook of American Agricultural History. That, I was deeply involved in. I saw -- had visions of using these people to take a hell of a lot of pictures that could be useful in that book. And I had outlines and I had all these cards, unfortunately I never saved the cards, but I have got the outlines. When I saw Dorothea Lange's migrant pictures I thought of my job with the migrants, my job with this organization; but, "Back behind here," I said, "this is agriculture, these would be wonderful, this is a migration." So it was this strange business going on. So when the transfer came, I'll never forget this as long as I live. My office was a partition in the Agricultural Building on the second floor. They had made partitions up there. Our laboratory for the department, very graciously said, "We'll let you work in here." I hired a guy to head all this up, and said, "We'll order film and cameras and stuff." I wish I could go back and find the story of that episode, but that's forgotten and gone. When it was all transferred in, we worked through the night about three nights. Carl Mydans shot 35mm. Film by the mile, it seems like. We laid it on the floor. We learned how to file. We developed our own filing system, we collected them into sets, we had envelopes made, and it came to us by instinct, by talking among us. Arthur came in, I think Arthur and Carl were the two major ones, and we worked on a filing system. How we ever got through I don't know, ho we ever got any order put of it. Dorothea Lange's pictures intrigued me and the first thing we knew we could get her. The Rehabilitation Division of the Department of Interior -- Walker Evans was working over there, a very interesting woman by the name of Ernestine Evans was attached to the Farm Security. She was interested in housing, one of those curious minds that was fertile, she was afraid of J. Franklin's, and she could stimulate lots of things. She wanted us to bring Walker over because they were transferring some of the work of the Rehabilitation Division to us; so Walker Evans came over. Now Rex had met a man named Adrian Dornbusch of Florida. He was working for the WPA. Able and curious, a wild man, who wanted to set up -- and Miss Falke was instrumental in that too -- in setting up something called Special Skills to design, to set up projects out in the field, to weave, and one thing and another. Ben Shahn came down on that. And I got acquainted with Ben Shahn at that time. And I don't know the details, I don't know, I couldn't possibly give you the step-by-step transition how Ben Shahn came. I don't know. But all of a sudden he was on a trip. Ben's shrewd -- he gave himself a trip out of this business through the South. I was delighted because more pictures. By this time we were getting pictures in, and I began to, you know, like a hungry man who got water, got different mineral water, and I said, "John, this is wonderful. Let's have Ben Shahn go." So Ben took a trip down through the South as a special job. Incidentally, that was one of the great factors in my education with Ben with his camera. By the way, when Walker came over, Walker and I came very close. We spent lots of time together. In the evenings we'd walk the streets of Washington and talk, talk, talk. He was very much a part of my education. I learned much about his type of photography. Remember, I had no basis at all for the graphics of what I was going to do. As I told you back at the start of this tape, we had stereoscopes, we had the old Cabinet photos, my second brother from the top had a camera, I still have got his pictures around of the family on the walls here at Montrose, I've still got a lot of his pictures. I started working with his camera. Later on I had desire for a camera, I became, I suppose, a gadgeteer. But how did it happen that this all came about? I don't know. I'm trying to give you a lot of diverse factors, that took place. Anyway, we were in business. The stuff began to come in. It began to be used. And, we were in business. The stuff began to come in. It began to be used. And it was at this time that Mike Cowles came down. His brother-in-law, who is now deceased, married to one of Cowles' girls. Jim McDonald was the top assistant to Secretary Wallace, also played tennis together. Jim had said to me, "I'm going to tell my brother-in-law about what you're doing, and I think he ought to come down." The correspondence is here in the file. Now that first episode, I remember, (it's terribly amusing), later on I was brash enough to write a criticism of the first issue of Life. I've got it. So Mr. Cowles came down. Life was getting under way. Carl Mydans came in and said he was offered a job on Life and wanted to leave. Russ Lee had been in to see us. He had come across Special Skills because he was an engineer married to an artist, Doris Lee, and came down to see the Special Skills because he didn't know where he belonged. He didn't know what was going on down there. He was sent over by Ben to see me. I had nothing for him. He had three or four sets of pictures -- Father Divine, the bootleg coal business, and I couldn't think of anything but the Forest Service at that moment. He came back and laughed and said, "They didn't need any photographers but they wanted somebody to tint prints."

RICHARD DOUD: He told me about that.

ROY STRYKER: