Color photos from the Depression era

When we think of photos of the Great Depression (for example, this iconic image from Dorothea Lange below), we think in terms of black and white.



But starting in 1939, the government started taking photos in color, some of the earliest photos made with the newly developed Kodachrome process. These color photos were half forgotten and have rarely been seen, but are now out in a new book called "Bound for Glory". Here's a link to a story about the book, with 12 pictures:

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/flash/page/0,,1959813,00.html

A few examples:

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I found it really jarring to look at these photos. I'm so conditioned to seeing images from that time as black & white that these color photos seem unreal, almost like they were staged, or stills from a current movie set.

*this* is what I want for cmas.

The two shots of meals... the family and the railroad workers...illustrate perfectly a discussion I had with one of my kids the other day. An elderly friend returned some jars to me. Just old spaghetti sauce jars that I had given her some soup in..trying to remember why I had made the soup as it was over a year ago..OH! Her son and his family had to evacuate for Katrina- their home was heavily damaged by falling trees and the wife and kids ended up staying here while he went back to reconstruct the house. So, I took soup to feed the extra mouths one night...Anyway, this older woman had driven around with the jars in her car for months and months in order to return them to me. We finally caught up with each other last weekend at a party where I followed her out to her car when she left so I could collect the dang jars! My son, a teen-ager, was wondering why I arrived home with this package of JARS so lovely wrapped and was watching while I "un' wrapped them and dropped them into the recycling bin. I explained the age of my friend..and that her upbringing would NEVER allow her to throw away a perfectly good jar. How my own grandparents, long gone now, would have been the same. Who in their right mind throws away a good jar!!?? Well, we all do now, of course. But, look at the all the jars on the table in the family scene..and the thermoses- no plastic bottles of water or cups of Starbucks for the railroad workers. Food wrapped in paper not zip-locs. ( and I shall refrain from discussing the effects on our endocrine works from all the plastics) Just the mere cost alone of what we THROW AWAY now is amazingly evident in these photos.

The power of the camera to capture those every day moments and to heave them back at us years later...amazing. Tangible History.

When we moved her out of her house to a "care facility", a house she had lived in for 40 years, and started cleaning it out, we found a mountain of mason jars in her cellar. Hundreds of them. We all had a big laugh about it, but later we realized it was just her habit from having lived through the Depression, a habit she never changed.

We couldn't believe all the stashed stuff in her house when she passed away. The one that really left us scratching our heads was hundreds of wooden thread spools.

I agree with you - it's eerie and fascinating to see this era in color. The Pie Town photos especially are just remarkable.

They look like my old relatives.

to see. Maybe they printed the black and whites in book form because it was cheaper at one time?

As to the saving glass jars and other things. When my husband's Aunt and Uncle died and we were helping his cousins get rid of things we had to empty everything out and go through all books. They had cash stashed everywhere. Even at the bottom of coffee cans filled with screws and stuff. By the time they were done E and N found over $50,000.00. They will never know if they threw money out with some of the first stuff they cleaned out. Now I warn people that are cleaning out older peoples houses (specially depression era like they were) to check everything for cash. N lived there and had been taking care of her mom and had no idea they had money all over the place.

You can acquire most of FSA images for a printing fee.

http://www.loc.gov/preserv/pds/
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There are more the 100k images in the Library of congress FSA image collection. Much of the collection is cataloged in the online database. Most of the online records contain digital images. There is often an uncompressed version of the file. I was able to download a 58MB tiff file of a Walker Evans image.

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/pp/mdbquery.html

that is a alternate universe. I could spend WEEKS on that site...................

uh oh

But, thank you!