C I V I L    M A R R I A G E    I S    A    C I V I L    R I G H T.

A N D N O W I T ' S T H E L A W O F T H E L A N D.


Saturday, July 17, 2010

America in Color, 1939-1943

An online exhibition at the Library of Congress with seventy color images of rural and small-town life taken for the Farm Security Administration and Office of War Information. 

It was hard to choose just a few to show you here, nearly all of them tell a story.  Go check it out for yourself:  the world our parents knew, scenes that were rapidly fading away by the time we baby boomers came along - preserved here at the dawn of the Kodachrome era.

Gravelly Range, Madison County, Montana, 1942

Homesteading family, New Mexico, 1940

Lincoln, Nebraska, 1942

Vermont State Fair, 1941

Bomber factory, Tennessee, 1943

Tank crew at Fort Knox, Kentucky, 1943

Melrose, Louisiana, 1940




6 comments:

Stan said...

Great pics! I love the old store fronts with their simple ads back then that seemed more homey and less flashy/corporate like they are today.
Also a cowboy on his horse and faithful, loyal, companion dog always touches my heat.
Thanks Russ.

Staircase Witch said...

Would you believe it? I have a book of these exact pictures from the OWI, titled *Bound for Glory.* I'd found it in a secondhand bookstore in Durango, CO, and as soon as I'd opened it and begun reading the jacket, I knew it had to be mine. I love this book dearly and page through it often. It was a revelation to me. I think my absolute favorites are photographs of the Pie Town, NM settlers and the female bomber factory employees.

Russ Manley said...

Stan - glad you like. I love the old stores and cowboys and dogs too.

SW - a book, who knew? I was first drawn to the NM settlers' photographs too: raw life, unvarnished, like the famous Migrant Mother photograph.

Gary said...

Nice pics, Russ! I love the color tone, subject matter, and older photographs in general. I hope the digital age never completely overtakes the world of developed film photography, although I have this sinking feeling that it is inevitable.
Thanks for posting these! They are priceless.

Russ Manley said...

Digital is great for amateurs like me, my little Kodak has opened up a whole new world of creative fun that would have been prohibitively expensive with film. But yes, there's a certain quality to the art of the old film photos that should not be lost entirely.

Glad you like, Gary.

Rick said...

Thanks for sharing these. They are a real treasure.

Related Posts with Thumbnails