Farm Security Administration. In This Proud Land: America 1935-1943 as Seen in the FSA Photographs by Roy Strkyer and Nancy Wood.

Gallahad, 1973. [A significant resource: Stryker's own account of the FSA photography project, with a selection of his favorite photographs from the file. Repro quality and content same as NYGS edition; dust jacket is different with an updated bio and photo of Nancy Wood.] Summary:

In This Proud Land: America 1935–1943 as Seen in the FSA Photographs (1973), published by the New York Graphic Society with text by writer Nancy Wood and selections and commentary by Roy Stryker, is a foundational photographic volume celebrating the historic archive of the Farm Security Administration (FSA) and Office of War Information (OWI).

Key Details & Summary

• Scope & Historical Archive: Gathers roughly 200 master black-and-white photographs selected from the massive 270,000-image archive generated by the federal government's historic documentary project during the Great Depression and World War II.

• Photographers & Perspectives: Features iconic works by legendary documentary photographers who worked under Stryker's direction, including Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, Arthur Rothstein, Russell Lee, Ben Shahn, Marion Post Wolcott, Jack Delano, John Vachon, and Gordon Parks.

• Themes & Daily Life: Documents the harsh realities of rural poverty, migrant labor, and the Dust Bowl alongside the resilience, community life, small-town landscapes, and labor rhythms of everyday Americans across the country.

• Textual Framing: Combines Stryker’s personal reflections on directing the historical section with Nancy Wood's evocative introductory narrative, capturing the administrative vision and human empathy that defined America's most ambitious state-sponsored documentary project.

• Roy Emerson Stryker (1893–1975) was an American economist, government official, and editor who created and directed the historic photography project for the Farm Security Administration (FSA) during the Great Depression. Born in Great Bend, Kansas, Stryker studied economics at Columbia University, where he worked closely with Rexford Tugwell, who later brought him to Washington, D.C., in 1935 to head the Historical Section of the Resettlement Administration (renamed the FSA in 1937). Though not a photographer himself, Stryker possessed an exceptional vision for documentary social realism; he hired, directed, and managed a legendary team of photographers—including Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, Arthur Rothstein, Marion Post Wolcott, and Gordon Parks—assembling a landmark archive of over 170,000 images that documented American rural poverty and resilience. After leaving government service in 1943, he directed major corporate photojournalism archives for Standard Oil of New Jersey and the Pittsburgh Photographic Library, cementing his legacy as a central architect of modern American documentary photography and visual history.

Copies available:

• Fine with very good protected dust jacket that has a couple of small closed tears. 
• Fine with protected VG- dust jacket that has some edge wear and a long crease on inner front flap. 
• Very good, non-authorial gift inscription on front flyleaf, protected good dust jacket with large chips and edge wear.