Roy Stryker was an American economist known for leading a photo documentary project highlighting the Farm Security Administration’s (FSA) efforts in providing aid and relief to the impoverished during the Great Depression in the 1930s.
He achieved this by assembling a team of talented photographers who he would instruct on what to photograph for the project. If Stryker didn’t like what he saw, he would blemish the negative with an unsightly hole punch and even going as far as to shoot for the face with his murder weapon.
While photographs such as Migrant Mother were selected by Stryker for showing a desired facet of rural poverty, there were many other photographs that didn’t make the cut and were taken out in the most punishing manner.
Perhaps it was the smiling faces or a lack of emotional narrative that led Stryker to reject these particular photos from the record. Either way,
the ruthless photo editor would punch a hole through the negative in an attempt to wipe the image clean from the record.
His dictatorial editing style was heavily criticised at the time by the photographers who would complain about the extreme elimination process which finally ceased in 1939.
Thankfully, the hole punched photos can still be found in the archives of the Library of Congress living alongside the photos that shaped our image of the Great Depression.
Images via Library of Congress
[Article provided for Bokeh]
