Extraordinary color photos of the late depresson era

[spinbaby]

I just came across these color photos from around 1940 and can't take my eyes off of them--just stunning. I can't figure out how to post one of the photos here, but they're definitely worth taking a look.

http://blogs.denverpost.com/captured/2010/07/26/captured-america-in-color-from-1939-1943/2363/

[madrchsod]

1. thanks....!

[NutmegYankee]

2. Thanks!

That was neat.

[Tien1985]

3. These are so cool

The ones from Caribou, ME could be from now. Kids still dig potatoes in October. They even have a week off from school for harvest around that time.

[femmocrat]

4. A wonderful view into American life at that time....

Beautiful and haunting. Thanks for posting!

[grntuscarora]

5. Thanks for the link!

Those are amazing pictures.

[haikugal]

6. Fascinating, beautiful and sad...

the obvious poverty and difficulty of peoples lives. The comments are worth a look to. Thanks!

[Squinch]

7. Those are amazing!

Not only are they great slices of life, a lot of them are really artful, beautiful photos.

[jimlup]

8. Wow! Time travel is possible!

Very cool ... my dad who is 81 would have been a kid.

[hatrack]

9. Fascinating! Thanks for the link - I've got to get my Dad to the computer

He's 90 and would really get a kick out of these images.

[NoMoreWarNow]

10. truly awesome pics-- thanks!

[underpants]

11. Many great shots there - here are four

http://denverpost.slideshowpro.com/albums/001/496/album-125171/cache/color070.sJPG_950_2000_0_75_0_50_50.sJPG?1365939981

http://denverpost.slideshowpro.com/albums/001/496/album-125171/cache/color058.sJPG_950_2000_0_75_0_50_50.sJPG?1365939981

http://denverpost.slideshowpro.com/albums/001/496/album-125171/cache/color021.sJPG_950_2000_0_75_0_50_50.sJPG?1365939981

http://denverpost.slideshowpro.com/albums/001/496/album-125171/cache/color043.sJPG_950_2000_0_75_0_50_50.sJPG?1365939981

[Heidi]

12. Thank you so much, spinbaby!

:kick:

[Laelth]

13. Great photos. Thanks for posting.

I'd advise against reading the comments that follow the pictures. They're mostly useless and petty from what I can tell.

-Laelth

[JDPriestly]

14. Wonderful pictures.

One of the things that caught my eye was the apples at 4lbs for 25 cents, grapefruit a nickel each and oranges for 1 cent - in Nebraska, a long way from where oranges and grapefruits are grown.

The inflation since 1940 is pretty apparent from that picture.

[sorefeet]

15. The food is better than we have today.

It was real. I see little to no obesity. It was harder to obtain and hygiene was poor understandably. It is haunting, it's what our families went through.

[myrna minx]

16. Thank you so much for posting. K&R n/t

[timdog44]

17. The Pie Town, NM pix

are fairly famous about the photo blogs. It is interesting to see in color what most people imagined to black and white.

Here is another site to go to and look for pictures from America's past. http://www.loc.gov/index.html
There are several categories and you can search to find things significant to you. Home town, vacation spots, etc.

[Botany]

18. Those pix came from this site ....

http://www.shorpy.com/

you can spend hours looking at them

[nadinbrzezinski]

19. I need to go shoot that photo essay

On poverty. You find scenes like that today.

[RedRocco]

21. you realy should

I think many here do do not know what poverty looks like.

[nadinbrzezinski]

28. Editor and I have been talking about it

It's logistics, it's finding people who agree, and doing it.

We just started to talk about it

[freshwest]

31. I'm sure CA has its version of colonias as TX does. Loose zoning permits the poor to live.

[nadinbrzezinski]

32. That, and levels of poverty in rural areas

That defy the imagination. Let's just say Ciudades Perdidas or Appalachia come to mind

[freshwest]

34. The strange thing is, that in such areas people can find some freedom due to the space.

People know how to make do in these situations. In the city, because of their 'low standard of living,' they'd be fined, harrassed or run out with no place to lay their head.

People can reorganize their lives in the country as well as the city, but it will be done differently. Both are hard roads to go down, but this is where the ties of family and friends pay off handsomely. Not in terms of dollars or possessions, but acceptance and a feeling of belonging.

Of course it's not idyllic and things were not just, on the small scale or the large scale. Many people kept the faith with each other. It eventually led to prosperity for their descendants.

In looking at the photographs here, we see the rough cudgeling together of a future society, always. There is change and renewal. Just not in the 'proper' way some think life is made, or the way they like it to be.

[freshwest]

29. I've seen it and it's nothing to be ashamed of. It's where what's alive means more than dead things.

It was the world of my parents and what made them realize working together, forgiving, looking for a better day and not tearing each other down were survival traits.

Not this doomsday prepper, 'I'll get mine and the hell with you' thinking the world seems to be into now. People are love with gaming and inaminate objects, not life. Sigh.

[gateley]

20. K&R

[namaste2]

22. I so appreciate your posting this! Thank you! n/t

[Posteritatis]

23. Looking up some of the towns today is striking

I was checking out a few of the named ones in Street View; the "different yet similar" vibe is kind of eerie in some.

[socialist_n_TN]

24. Beautiful. And thanks!......

nm

[bvar22]

25. Thank You.

These photos are stunning, and enlightening!!!

One problem they did NOT have in the 40s, obesity.
Those people were as lean and hard as barbed wire!

[yourout]

26. Awesome.

[RKP5637]

27. And here we are today, photos, same thing!!!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x325058

[slackmaster]

30. My mom was born in 1934. She lived that life as a young girl.

The funny thing is, the way she talks about it it seems that most people really weren't aware of how poor they were. They just took care of each other.

[pansypoo53219]

33. nobody is obese.

[CrispyQ]

35. That was fantastic. Thank you!

~kick

[L0oniX]

36. Gee ...people used to build stuff here?

[MineralMan]

37. My parents were just starting high school in

a small mining town in Arizona then. They'd love to see those photos. Maybe I'll print them and send them. They've given up the computer at this point.

[AsahinaKimi]

38. Amazing photos

This was our American culture.. it was interesting to see the clothing, the hair styles.. the dirt and dust caked up on people and buildings alike. I don't think I would have liked to have lived back then.. but it was interesting to see the designs of town buildings.. Oranges for 1 cent. I don't even know what an orange costs today, but nothing can be bought for a penny. The shack houses.. fishing holes.. coveralls, and Cotton dresses. Men wore hats for nearly every occasion. The P-51 Mustang in flight, and a real Rosie the Riveter working on an air plane.

wow.. just amazing.

[Art_from_Ark]

61. I think for you, it would have been especially difficult

to live back then. Imagine having to live in an age when tensions were building to the breaking point, between the country you were living in, and the native land of your parents. My grandmother went through that, at that time. Although she was not sent to a camp, she nonetheless was forced to deny her German heritage, and I can't remember her ever talking about it during the time that I knew her.

[AsahinaKimi]

64. This is true.. as A Japanese American

I WOULD be sharing a bunk space with George Takei

[FourScore]

39. Amazing! Thank you for posting this, spinbaby! n/t

[Unknown Beatle]

40. Five Interesting Photos

Faro and Doris Caudill, homesteaders. Pie Town, New Mexico, October 1940.

Children gathering potatoes on a large farm. Vicinity of Caribou, Aroostook County, Maine, October 1940.

Barker at the grounds at the state fair. Rutland, Vermont, September 1941.

Boy building a model airplane as girl watches. Robstown, Texas, January 1942.

A Fourth of July celebration. St. Helena Island, South Carolina, 1939.

[JimDandy]

41. The last photo... the one of the carbon black worker...

his death-like countenance, with the soot on the outside and surely inside too, left me feeling he probably was not long for this world when that was taken.

[patricia92243]

42. Wow! Thanks for posting.

[Curmudgeoness]

43. So few smiles.

I realize that it was not traditional at the time to smile for the camera, but even the impromptu photos had few smiles.

I think the one that actually bothered me was the square dancing....and no one looked like they were enjoying themselves.

Sad.

[Warpy]

52. Often they didn't smile because they couldn't afford dentistry.

You see a lot of that out west now. This is still pretty poor country and ever since Stupid made people get passports to visit dentists in Mexico, people have had to just let their teeth go.

[Mr.Bill]

44. It's evident that

the landscaping business had not really taken off yet back then.

Cool pictures. That's the world my parents grew up in.

[bluedeer71]

45. Such awesome photos.....thanks!

These photos are so awesome! Thank you for sharing with us.

[limpyhobbler]

46. Absolutely stunning and amazing.

I love it. thanks.

[Seedersandleechers]

47. The homestead act

Wow, so you could homestead in New Mexico.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_Acts


Can you still do that here in the US? Anyone know?

[Seedersandleechers]

48. dupe

[pscot]

49. Momma don't take my Kodachrome...

These must have been taken with a large format camera.

[snappyturtle]

50. K&R Thank you for posting all of thesse photos! Wonderful..nt

[bucolic_frolic]

51. The New England Photos by Jack Delano

Wonder if related to FDR?

[kwassa]

59. Delano goes back to the Pilgrims

Phillipe De La Noye, later anglicized to Delano. I am distantly related, somehow, as is FDR.

[William769]

53. kick & recommended.

[NealK]

54. Great find!

[annabanana]

55. The whole loc.gov site is one of the finest time-chompers on the net!. . .n/t

[WoodyM90]

56. I am 85 years old.

The boy in picture 29 could have been me. Notice how his new overalls have the cuffs turned up and how large they are around his legs, and how high they are on his chest. As denim lasted a long time, they were always bought much larger than a fit, as was most other clothes. Note his “tennis shoes.” They were bought because they were cheaper. One laced all the way up, the other with a broken shoestring.

Note how dirty the girls legs and arms are and his ankles. They were probably lucky to get a bath in a tin tub on Saturday.

And as for as obesity, you did not get a lot to eat.

[rlegro]

57. By coincidence I just saw these very photos at the Milwaukee Art Museum

Through May 10 the museum is putting on a specially curated exhibit: "Color Rush: 75 Years of Color Photography in America." The exhibit depicts the evolution of color photogrsaphy, aesthetically and technically. It begins with images made in the groundbreaking Autochrome process beginning in 1907, then surveys the evolution of color photography through categories and specific photographers. Early color movies and 3D images are included. The Depression photos referenced here are a small but quite affecting section of this sprawling exhibit, which has been attracting large crowds. I recommend it. More here:
http://thirdcoastdaily.com/2013/02/the-milwaukee-art-museums-dazzling-color-rush/

[curlyred]

58. These are great!

Thanks.

[LittleGirl]

60. left me transfixed. thank you. eom

[Princess Turandot]

62. Here's a link to the full source collection at the Library of Congress:

color: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/fsac/ (1,600 images)
b&W: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/fsa/about.html (175,000 images)

This was the US govt. funded project which produced the iconic image referred to as 'Migrant Mother', by Dorothy Lange:

http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/fsa1998021539/PP/ :


Browse when you have a lot of time to look!

[PatrynXX]

63. color slides

have some from mid to late 40's. scanned those. Rather good color for the time it was. Mostly the SCS stuff grandpa worked for in the 40's, 50's around Iowa....

[Danmel]

65. haunting & beautiful

Thanks for posting

[michigandem58]

66. 16 and 17 are haunting

Along with others. Incredible how some people lived then.

[MrMickeysMom]

67. Interesting story in picture... comments, not so impressed with

... referring to the comments below.

I see these pictures as representative of a time we should by now have learned to avoid.

We will be driven back to those days in a different way, given what we "Americans" have turned into.

Do we learn by how the poverty was created? No... Do we see pride in everyone pulling their own? More likely this is what I see.

Either way, I"m glad those moments were captured.

[rustydog]

68. "They were great people!

Maybe they would have been "Beliebers!"