PITTSBURGH, PA.-Beginning in the summer of 1950, Roy Stryker, director of the newly established Pittsburgh Photographic Library (PPL), sent a team of photographers throughout Pittsburgh to visually document the transformation of the “Smoky City” during the enormous period of urban renewal known as the Pittsburgh Renaissance. Approved images from these forays were carefully labeled, numbered, and stored in the PPL, a bank of images that would be used to help educate Pittsburghers and the nation about the life of a postwar industrial American city in the process of reinventing itself. Witness to the Fifties: Selections from the Pittsburgh Photographic Library, 1950–1953, on view at Carnegie Museum of Art from November 5, 2005 through February 26, 2006, displays 82 black-and-white PPL photographs from the collections of Carnegie Museum of Art and the University of Pittsburgh Press. Additional related materials on display include portfolios and magazines.

This selection of images on view provides an unforgettable look at the city in a state of flux. The building fragments of the demolished old Exposition Building frame a view to the construction of Gateway Center. Weathered row houses on Forbes Avenue with washtubs hanging from their windows contrast with photographs of a brand new housing development east of Wilkinsburg. In one image, steelworkers catch rivets and place I-beams, while another image shows a man whose eyes were “shot out in a mine” begging for money.

Although not a photographer himself, Roy Stryker was well known for his work as a director of documentary photography. In the 1930s he sent photographers out with their cameras to capture the plight of rural America during the Great Depression for the Farm Securities Administration (FSA). In the 1940s, his team of photographers created a series of affirming images of the field operations of Standard Oil of New Jersey (SONJ).

The invitation to oversee the photographic record of Pittsburgh’s evolution to a modern industrial center was extended to Stryker by the Allegheny Conference on Community Development, a group comprising the city’s most powerful corporate, political, and educational leaders. The University of Pittsburgh became the PPL’s home.

After accepting the position, Stryker was immediately faced with pressing deadlines for People in Pictures, an exhibition to launch awareness of the PPL scheduled for the fall of 1950 at Carnegie Museum of Art. To have the exhibition ready in time, he called in seasoned photographers Harold Corsini, Esther Bubley, Sol Libsohn, Arnold Eagle, and Elliott Erwitt—all of whom had worked with him on the FSA and/or the SONJ projects. Stryker also contracted work from Francis Nestler, a photographer at the University of Pittsburgh. After the exhibition, he hired Clyde “Red” Hare, whose photographs of the city were the beginning of a lifelong career spent documenting Pittsburgh. Stryker brought in Richard Saunders, who moved into the city’s Hill District and photographed life in the city’s predominantly black wards. Regina Fisher, a Pittsburgh native, had heard Roy Stryker lecture while at school in New York. When she learned of the project in her hometown, she approached him and was hired. Later, Fisher won fifth prize in the picture story division of Life magazine’s Young Photographer’s Contest for some of her PPL work, and she was featured on the cover of the November 26, 1951 issue. In the summer of 1951, in preparation for the second major exhibition at Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh Portrait, Stryker recruited Russell Lee, who had also worked with him on the FSA and SONJ projects. James Blair, who would one day be known for his photographs of the civil rights movement and for more than 40 stories as a National Geographic magazine staff photographer, interned with Stryker that same summer. Representative works by all of these photographers are on view in the exhibition.

Stryker resigned from the project in the fall of 1951, but the PPL continued with its photographic mission under the direction of Marshall Stanley. Guaranteed funding for three years, the PPL was expected to eventually pay for itself through print sales to local and national businesses, media, and other sources. At the end of the three years, the project was sustained for an additional year with support from the University of Pittsburgh; but the PPL failed to become self-sufficient and was discontinued.

In the years that followed, the university was unable to provide safe storage for the negatives and adequate access for referencing the images; a new home was needed for the collection. Ralph Munn, director/librarian of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, accepted the PPL; and in January 1961, the 18,000 images transferred from the University of Pittsburgh to the library provided the foundation for “Pittsburgh in Pictures,” the photographic collection in the Pennsylvania Department.

Since then, Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh has continued to acquire photography collections and today holds more than 50,000 images in the Pittsburgh Photographic Library.