Dick's wealth allowed him to provide his own funding, and gave him an independence the other photographers lacked. Stryker attempted to provide some guidance for the kind of photographs he was looking for, writing to Dick, "It is terribly important that you in some way try to show the town against this background of waste piles and coal tipples. In other words, it is a coal town and your pictures must tell it." Instead, many of Dick's photographs are interiors, bars, and images of ordinary life. Critic Collen McDannel has pointed out that, particularly in regard to his treatment of religion, Dick's work is different from most of the FSA file. Because of his composition of images of the poor surrounded by religious items and by ordinary household objects (objects not in themselves indicating poverty), Dick's photographs are less politically clear than those of the other FSA photographers. His composition "transgresses common assumptions about men and religion and therefore appears to be less 'documentary.'"