May 9 2018 | By Aïda Amer for Atlas Obscura
How a Hole Punch Shaped Public Perception of the Great Depression
(Above: Untitled photo, possibly related to: Mr. Tronson, farmer near Wheelock, North Dakota. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS/LC-DIG-FSA-8A22121)
From his office at the Farm Security Administration (FSA) in Washington, D.C., Roy Stryker saw time and again, the reality of the Great Depression, and the poverty and desperation gripping America’s rural communities. As head of the Information Division and manager of the FSA’s photo-documentary project, his job was to hire and brief photographers, and then select images they captured for distribution and publication. His eye helped shape the way we view the Great Depression, even today.
Professionally, Stryker was known for two things: preserving thousands of photographs from being destroyed for political reasons, and for “killing” lots of photos himself. Negatives he liked were selected to be printed. Those he didn’t—ones that didn’t fit the narrative and perspective of the FSA at the time, perhaps—were met with the business end of hole punch, which left gaping black voids in place of hog’s bellys, industrial landscapes, and the faces of farmworkers.
Stryker never said why he killed certain photos and kept others, or why it was necessary to ritualistically kill negatives with a hole punch. But a review of the killed images, which survive in digital and physical form in the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Black-and-White Negatives Collection at the Library of Congress, reveals some of his preferences. The most prominent feature of the photographs is illustration of the resoluteness of the “American Spirit,” and the rugged individualism of rural families. These images appear to depict the New Deal as a leg up for struggling Americans, rather than a crutch for the lazy. Empathy and subject-viewer connection are also strong themes, as is inviting viewers into the subjects’ private spaces and moments.
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