Stryker'​​s Choice

About

  This website, ‘Stryker’s Choice’, was created by Robert Herringshaw in association with SMD Computers Ltd in order to provide an online research tool.  At the same time offering to extend the original resource  for photographers and photo-historians, worldwide.   You may be wondering why Roy Emmerson Styker chose to punch holes in such valuable negatives, as part of the selection process for Resettlement Administration/Farm Security Administration Photography 1935-1939.  This is the essential Research Question and very much the quest of the online author and curator.

The charming picture below is the first image in the Hole-punched Gallery, no 0001, or more officially LC-USF33-002017-M3.  Robert Herringshaw gave this image the title of ‘Resettlement children, Ozark Mountains,  Arkansas.’  It  was captured by Arthur Rothstein in August 1935.

Click on the image in the Gallery and more information is revealed. Click again on the blue LOC Library link and you will be taken directly to Library of Congress online Catalogue where  further information becomes available.  One is hardly surprised to learn that several of the photographers that Stryker employed in 1935, took grave exception to having holes punched in their work.
“Who knows how valuable they might be in the future”   (Ben Shahn, the artist and photographer)
It is now 2025 and the future has already arrived. Robert Herringshaw, with the aid of AI empowered software, has filled the holes in all 4225 negatives that Stryker made.  All that was once lost has now been regained and pictures that never were, re-imagined.
Enter the ‘Restored Gallery ‘ and enjoy them as they were originally meant to be.  In addition, the images are also available as negatives in the Restored Negatives Gallery which interactive and provides further information.