island. >> this is a photograph of the willard in the open days. >> this is from france as benjamin to johnston -- francis benjamin johnston. this is gone. the only way that we know that this look like is because she photographed this. to me, this says everything. i actually take photographs, and i am also interested in the one who photographed the depression, and there are some photographs that tell you one thing, and people may say another thing about that time. but photographs speak the truth. what i love is that you can actually go into the photograph and study this. there was a book written about johnston about detail. she used large format cameras, but you can go into them, to study everything and i think this is fascinating. >> how often do you run into people who know the country like you do? >> there are a lot of people who know the country, and many people -- but the thing that makes me unique is the fact i have been to so many small places. i doubt -- i did books for random house for years, and sometimes my word to me there and sometimes it was curiosity. i am very interested in the disappearin

i am using 20 photographs from francis benjamin johnston, who went there in 1901 and took some photographs. would you like to see them at the library of congress? and i said this would be fascinating. i thought, these are wonderful and this is what they use. i thought that this was amazing. in that amount of time, she came in 1901, and in 79 years -- presidents had stayed here, and one block from the white house, this has fallen into such disrepair, what could happen in my lifetime. that's what i wanted to go into. part of it was i thought i should record my lifetime. everything in america. the other thing is that we had just gone through the concrete, where they built the fbi building and others like this, and nixon was wanting to take down all of the historic structures on pennsylvania avenue, and just make this all concrete. i said, if i took photographs, people could see this first. there was a governmental agency, the hudson avenue corp., which was set up after john f. kennedy wrote his inaugural address. at that time -- he said to people around him, we have to do something because th