2001 Instant City, Fotographia E Metropoli;Centro per
l’arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci; Prato, Italy
Selected Works
Crosby Street, New York, 1978
Prinzipalmarkt, Mu ̈nster, 1986
Shinju-ku, Tokio, 1986
The Messina Family, Rome, 1988
Le Lignon, Geneva, 1989
Muse ́e du Louvre 1, Paris, 1989
Muse ́e du Louvre IV, Paris, 1989
Art Institute of Chicago 1, Chicago, 1990
The Ghez Family, Chicago, 1990
Galleria dell’Accademia, Vendig, 1992
Plant No. 6, Mallow, Winterthur, 1992
Further Reading
Belting, Hans. Thomas Struth Museum Photographs.
Munich: Schirmer/Mosel, 1993.
Buchloh, Benjamin.Thomas Struth Photographs. Chicago: The
Renaissance Society at The University of Chicago, 1990.
Buchloh, Benjamin, and Thomas Struth. Interview.Por-
traits Thomas Struth. New York: Marian Goodman
Gallery, 1990.
Garrels, Gary.Photography in Contemporary German Art:
1960 to the Present. Minneapolis: Walker Art Center,
1992.
Heinzelmann, Markus. Albert Renger-Patzsch—Thomas
Struth Fotografien von Mu ̈nster.Mu ̈nster: Stadtmuseum
Mu ̈nster, 1996.
Loock, Ulrich.Thomas Struth, Unbewusste Orte/Uncon-
scious Places.Ko ̈ln: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther
Ko ̈nig, 1987.
Mu ̈ller, Maria.Aus Der Distanz Photographien von Bernd und
Hilla Becher Andreas Gursky Candida Ho ̈fer Axel Hu ̈tte
Thomas Ruff Thomas Struth Petra Wunderlich.Du ̈ssel-
dorf: Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, 1991.
Sennett, Richard.Thomas Struth Strangers and Friends
1986–1992. London: Institute of Contemporary Art;
Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario; Boston: The Institute
of Contemporary Art; Munich: Schirmer/Mosel Verlag;
Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1994.ROY STRYKER
American
Roy Stryker, who saw photography as a tool for
social change, was responsible for coordinating the
United States’ largest photo documentary project
for the Farm Security Administration (FSA) from
1935–1943. He continued his role as a champion
for the social viability of photography at the Stan-
dard Oil Company of New Jersey and oversaw the
compilation of the most comprehensive photo-
graphic documentary of American life ever created,
ensuring its preservation at the Office of War
Information. Stryker, the son of a radical populist
farmer from Kansas, received his early training in
social radicalism as a photo editor for a ground-
breaking economics textbook in 1925,American
Economic Life and the Means of Its Improvement.
Written by Stryker’s Columbia University Eco-
nomics professor Rexford G. Tugwell, later a part
of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s ‘‘brains
trust’’ who often used photography as teaching
tool, the purpose of this book was to illustrate
economic inequity and other principles.
Styker was born in 1893 and grew up on a farm in
Colorado. His father was a progressive populist,
instilling ideas of social equality in his son early on.
After service in the Army in World War I, Stryker
received a degree in economics from Columbia
Unversity, New York, in 1924. He continued his
association with the university as a professor in the
economics department. In 1935, Stryker was invited
by Tugwell, then heading the Historical Section of
the Resettlement Administration—one of Roose-
velt’s ‘‘New Deal’’ programs created to help alleviate
the hardships caused by the Great Depression—to
create a photographic record of the program’s suc-
cesses. Indeed, Stryker’s success was not only to
publicize a government program but to be at the
center of a turning point in the history of photogra-
phy. The work undertaken by the FSA photogra-
phers promoted a new approach and aesthetic that
revealed the power of what was to become known as
documentary photography to shape public opinion,
which could work both to transform stereotypes and
also to bolster a government program or corporate
image. Under the direction of Stryker, who exercised
enormous control over the collecting, printing, and
distribution of the images, over a quarter of a million
negatives were created for the FSA. As Stryker
hoped, these photographs comprise an extraordinarySTRYKER, ROY