TREAT YOURSELF / Captured: America in Color from 1939-1943 it will make you proud

[Mira]

These images, by photographers of the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information, are some of the only color photographs taken of the effects of the Depression on America’s rural and small town populations. The photographs are the property of the Library of Congress and were included in a 2006 exhibit Bound for Glory: America in Color.




Faro and Doris Caudill, homesteaders. Pie Town, New Mexico, October 1940. Reproduction from color slide. Photo by Russell Lee. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress

There are 69 more images at the link. Someone mailed this to me, and I am proud to share it with my fellow Americans

see them here

http://extras.denverpost.com/archive/captured.asp

[NRaleighLiberal]

1. just outstanding. I could look at pictures like this for hours....

thanks for posting!

[Mira]

2. Me too.

The wealth of information and emotion and beauty is overwhelming.

[OffWithTheirHeads]

3. This is fucking amazing!

[Mickju]

4. Wonderful!

[Eleanors38]

5. Wonderful. Such "modern" fidelity. I'm impressed by old USN WWII films as well.

[Kurovski]

6. K&R. (nt)

[defacto7]

7. Simply one of the most spectacular

clips out of time; it's bringing the dead of American history back to life. Seeing it only once is too much to take in but given perspective, we should see ourselves in those people.

[lovemydog]

8. If anyone has links to more

beautiful, sharable photos I'd appreciate it. It's way past time I updated my facebook cover photo.

[bluedigger]

9. Those are really great!

I'm not positive, but I think the Red Bird Mine is down in the valley here. I know I passed signs for it. I think it is one of the very few survivors in the area.

[JohnnyRingo]

10. I love those old color images.

I've never seen those before. The color really takes me there.

Thanx so much for posting. I have a friend who always sends me rare pix like this. I beat her to it this time.

K&R!

on edit:
Thanx too for the special mention in the photo contest. Made me feel good.

[Live and Learn]

11. Thanks for sharing those were great. nt

[LeftInTX]

12. Outstanding! Great find!

[Brigid]

13. These are fascinating.

I love old photographs.

[snagglepuss]

14. Incrediable Thanks.

[indepat]

15. Having been about the age of so many of the children depicted, these photos bring back

a flood of memories and recollections of signage, grocery stores, et al.

[LancetChick]

16. Am I the only one who finds these photos depressing?

For the most part, everyone in these photos looks miserable and/or uncomfortable, as if they are just plodding through life because it's what their forebears did. Everyone looks dirty, bug-bitten and unkempt, which is understandable in the farm scenes, but they look this way dressed up as well! The food looks gross, and add what must have been much worse sexism and racism and it's hard to look at these photos.

This one caught my eye first because none of the guys is looking at his dance partner. The guy on the left looks as if he covets the other girl (or maybe the guy), and his partner looks as if she knows it. Then I noticed that they are drenched in sweat, and the guy on the right has an un-mended tear in the back of his shirt.

[IMG][/IMG]

This photo is one I do consider cheerful. Roses and tobacco and potted flowers in the windowsill.

[IMG][/IMG]

[zipplewrath]

17. Hard to view another time

Photos are time frozen, which can make it hard to interpret. Much of what you see in the first photo may be explained by what NOT in the photo. There may have been something that diverted the attention of many for a moment. Furthermore, it is hard to look at photos from another time and understand everything you see, and don't see. Things might look "strange" to you that people at the time would not even noticed.

Culture defines how we see things to a great degree and despite it being here in the US, the culture was radically different than what we know today, so much so that we might not "see" what people who took the pictures, or those in them, saw.

And that was a period of RAPID change. '39 was the end of the depression, but many of them didn't "know" it was soon to be over. It had been around for the better part of a decade and was only slightly better by then. In a few years the whole country would be "at war".

[eppur_se_muova]

18. Well, it was certainly a time before "wrinkle free" fabrics ...

and washing and ironing was a lot of hard work, so people often wore their clothes several times before washing. That's why shirt collars and cuffs were replacable -- you wore the same shirt with clean cuffs and collar, which saved laundering the shirt.

And of course, it was a time before air conditioning.

[Bluenorthwest]

20. Those dancers are square dancing in which you change partners...

Here's the band:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Orchestra_at_square_dance._McIntosh_County,_Oklahoma,_1939_or_1940.jpg

Another shot of dancers same night.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/2178340287/

Very poor, rural, hot humid square dancing. There is it.

[HereSince1628]

23. Looks that way to me too.

Rougher, tougher times when middle class suburbs hadn't really blossomed.

[Mira]

21. Very much about these photographs is depressing. The incessant hard work

the lack of money, the many children to raise and feed, the racist society, and the general preoccupation with taking care of the base necessities in Abraham Maslov's triangle of the hierarchy of needs. It did not leave much time and energy for the finer things in life and certainly not self actualization.

These photographs nevertheless show us some of how it used to be, where we came from, how we have progressed, and how we have stayed the same.

I have listened to Republicans say: "I came from humble beginnings. My family from way back worked very hard and all the time, and nobody gave them anything and they made it by their wits and by everybody pulling together."

These photos illustrate these tough times. I would very much like to pick those Repubes up, squeeze them into a little ball, and place them into the middle of them, and never let them come back out in this lifetime.
Indeed I wish I had that power, it makes me that mad to hear this crap said with ignorance and conviction.

[pscot]

19. Gorgeous color

They must have been made with a large format camera. The pictures are stunning.

[malaise]

22. Lovely

Thanks