Lyndon B. Johnson photo

Statement by the President on Announcing Photographic Program "The President's Choice."

January 13, 1965

THE HISTORY of our times and the efforts of this administration to meet the challenges of today are graphically expressed in photographs now being made. Photography can show with peculiar power that government is personal, that we are concerned with human beings, not statistics.

Note: The statement was made public as part of a White House release announcing the program. The release stated that the President had asked the department and agency heads to submit each month the three photographs "which most powerfully portray the problems of America and the efforts to meet them." The photographs would be screened by a group of outstanding photographers, listed in the release, from whose recommendations the President would select one each month to be released as "The President's Choice." It was the President's hope, the release added, that in time the photographs would be placed on exhibit and gathered together in a book "which will capture the spirit of our times."

The President's first selection, announced by the White House on February 4, was a photograph made in Puno, Peru, illustrating a school lunch project instituted as a part of the Food for Peace program.

Lyndon B. Johnson, Statement by the President on Announcing Photographic Program "The President's Choice." Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/241981

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