It was a time when Americans saw each other’s faces for the first time and saw what life was like across the nation – north to south, east to west, rich and poor.
For the first time on television, inspirational “behind the lens” stories from some of the most celebrated photographers in history will air nationwide on PBS. Narrated by Julian Bond, Documenting The Face of America: Roy Stryker and the Documentary Photographers highlights the forgotten collective pieces of our past. This story celebrates the courage and vision of a small group of legendary photographers and artists such as Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, Gordon Parks, Marion Post Wolcott, Russell Lee and others who worked with the U.S. Government under the unorthodox leadership of Roy Stryker from 1935 to 1943. Together they helped change the course of documentary photography, and introduced Americans to America.
This documentary brings to light, for the first time, the vision, drama and controversy that helped create and preserve a portrait of a decade. With a keen eye for detail and moments of truth, the photographers were given unprecedented freedom to travel and photograph American life from
coast to coast. As Stryker would later comment “Our photographers had one thing in common, and that was a deep respect for human beings.” Their resulting achievement –now considered a national treasure -- includes over 270,000 images archived at the Library of Congress.
Legendary photographer, artist and filmmaker Gordon Parks remembers on-camera how Roy Stryker helped him get to the heart of the matter with his first assignment. “Roy proved to me that you could not photograph a person who turned you away and say ‘this is a bigot’ because bigots have a way of looking just like everybody else. What the camera had to do was expose the evils of racism, the evils of poverty, by showing the people who suffered most under it. That was the way it had to be done.”
Documenting The Face of America - features on-camera interviews with the surviving photographers and their colleagues, as well as candid commentary by respected historians and photo curators who spotlight the stories that emerge from the rich archive of shooting scripts, letters and diaries from the photographers.
A one-hour documentary, Documenting The Face of America was produced in cooperation with South Carolina Educational Television (SCETV).
Written and directed by Jeanine Isabel Butler and co-produced by Alastair Reilly and Catherine Lynn Butler, with post-production assistance by The
2/25/07
The Sundance Online Film Festival selected the short DOCUMENTING THE FACE OF AMERICA to screen at the 2002 festival,
