The changing nature of news coverage and photojournalism was obvious to Fred Maroon in 1968 when Richard M. Nixon won the White House. Television news was replacing glossy magazines like LIFE and LOOK, which had been the principal market for the work of Maroon and his contemporaries. The photo spreads that once provided Americans their main source of news images were upstaged by the immediacy of television, and the daily drama of the war in Vietnam amid growing discord at home. As advertisers turned elsewhere, many magazines folded. The ones that survived bought fewer pictures and published fewer stories, making a tight market for free-lancers.

Maroon thought that an in-depth look at the Nixon administration would fill a void in coverage of the White House. Working on his own, he obtained permission to produce a book of behind-the-scenes photographs of the White House staff in their daily routines. Although the usual strategy was to restrict press access, the Nixon White House made an exception for Maroon, recognizing him as an objective photographer, and unlikely to produce an unflattering portrait of the administration. For nine months he was a familiar figure at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, recording Nixon and his colleagues at ease behind the formal facade of official photo opportunities and press conferences.