Book Review: Roy Stryker: U.S.A., 1943-1950

Humane propaganda

I thought was a fine tribute to Roy Stryker and it really is a continuation of his FSA and OWI output. Steven Plattner selected these 135 photos from the huge collection of Standard Oil (New Jersey) photos in the University of Louisville Photographic Archive. How Stryker came to work for a huge corporation is an interesting story. Standard Oil had an agreement with the German chemical company IG Farben (since 1929) not to develop synthetic rubber and the German company agreed not to compete with SO in America. This of course was illegal and in 1942 SO was investigated by Department of Justice because a shortage of synthetic rubber was damaging to the war effort. Nothing came of the investigation but the public had very hostile feelings towards the company. SO decided as a public relations exercise to create a photo record of the companies activities and the place of oil in everyday life.

Stryker initially turned down the offer to run this photo project but as work for the OWI was not to his liking he changed his mind and joined SO in 1943 with a small group of photographers. Fortunately the project had a broad remit and as you look through the book you'll see it's actually a visual record of everyday life during the forties very loosely related to the oil business.

The contents are portfolios of the twelve photographers: John Vachon; Harold Corsini; Edwin and Louise Rosskam; Esther Bubley; Gordon Parks; Sol Libsohn; Charlotte Brooks; Martha Roberts; Russell Lee; Charles Rotkin. Each has a spread with their photo and comprehensive biography followed by ten or twelve photos. I thought the selection of landscapes, street scenes, interiors with or without people excellent and probably less than a quarter are oil related. The book is nicely printed and designed, each photo is captioned and the back pages have a short but good bibliography.

The book nicely fills the gap between Roy Stryker's FSA/OWI work from 1935 to 1943 and his Pittsburgh Photo Library years 1950 to 1953.

Roy Stryker: U.S.A., 1943-1950 is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES | JP | CN)

Roy Stryker: U.S.A., 1943-1950
Title spread.