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.
