I just found my new favorite website of the moment.The Library of Congress has posted this rather hefty collection of original color photos from the 1930's and 40's on Flickr. First of all, I think it's brilliant that the LOC post photos using Flickr (it's a Flickr subscription like $25 a year? What an incredibly brilliant use of tax-payer money. I'm not kidding. This is great!).
Second, I really had no idea that color photography existed in the 30's and 40's. Probably because I never really thought about it. But for me, there's something insane and surreal and delightful about seeing these people and places in color. They seem much more real, but because it's unfamiliar, they also seem staged in a way that the black and white photos don't.
One way or another, this photo collection mesmerizes me. There are about 1,600 on the site and most of them are farms and buildings, which can get a little old. However, when you stumble on one with people in in it, or one from your own stomping grounds (like this one, taken at the Delta County Fair--or the one on the right, from Natchitoches, La.), they're really incredible.
If nothing else, check out the last few pages, which feature a lot of pictures of women factory workers fuselages and other indescribable aircraft parts.
The only downside is having to ignore the multitude of idiotic tags from comedic American whippersnappers. Maybe I'm just more elderly and humorless than I had assumed--but I can do without the comments from the peanut gallery, thank you.Clicking on any of these three pictures will take you to their original sites. Or you can click here and go to the first page of the Flickr album.
If you see one that you really like (or really hate, I guess) let me know. I'm curious.
Hey, "whippersnapper" is a pretty strong word to use here...
ReplyDeleteYou might be related to the person in the Delta photo. You can still get film for her camera at the Delta County Five and Dime.
At the Ben Franklin, you mean?
ReplyDeleteHe lived there too? I think you're right! Oh, you mean the store.
ReplyDeleteJust think, at this very moment, a clerk is putting price tags on bottles of contact cement, and the little bell on the door still rings when people open the door.
They still have a pay phone- it costs ten cents- and when you call someone, a person from the fifties answers.
Did someone just say, "Opie!"
You never saw the WWII in color series? Or The Wizard of Oz? Or all the super duper color movies that Rita Hayworth made?
ReplyDelete