1939-1945 In Color

[phongn]

From 1935-45, the Farm Security Administration and Office of War Information took over 165000 images to document the Depression and later the war effort. But starting in 1939, they took 1600 images - in color. These were mostly Kodachrome in 35mm and 4x5 format - and, unsurprisingly, the slides have held up tremendously well. You, too, can see the archive---and thanks to liberal US copyright law, you can download them at your pleasure.

Color
Black & White

[Simplicius]

I don't think the importance of this collection can be understated to anyone who is interested in US history, WWII stuff, or 20th centruy photography. Really, there are a lot of photographs here that are either of particular interest or are among the all-time iconic images.

(Click to go to the catalog listing, from where you can get high-resolution versions.)

(Links died; but the collections are browsable.)







































Jack Delano



Dorothea Lange

[tim31]

That's actually quite startling, the emphasis suddenly placed on parts of buildings. Especially the store with the gold painted frontage and the consolidating station.

[phongn]

Your links are unfortunately busted - those links appear to only be good on a temporary basis.

[Simplicius]

I was afraid of that - I checked them all before I posted, but I guess I was working in an open session or something. Until and unless I can remedy that, the collections can be browsed by subject and searched by keyword.

[Force Lord]

Jack Delano is known here in Puerto Rico for the photos he took here during the 1930's, when we were one of the poorest places in the Americas, the infamous "Poorhouse of the Carribbean".

[Kenny_10_Bellys]

When I was studying photojournalism we checked out some of the photographers and photos that make up the collection, some real iconic stuff in there. It's also odd seeing such high-quality colour shots of an era we normal only associate with monochrome photo and film. It makes it that much more real and touching.

[Big Orange]

Wow, those colour photos from the period feel much more contemporary and immediate. I like that M3 Lee, welder girl, and that vast Flying Fortress(?) assembly line.

[FSTargetDrone]

Wow, those colour photos from the period feel much more contemporary and immediate. I like that M3 Lee, welder girl, and that vast Flying Fortress(?) assembly line.

Those are B-25s. The B-17 Flying Fortress is a few photos above, silhouetted.

Anyway, color really does make it seem less distant, somehow.

[Big Orange]

They got the same spectacular colour image of the B-25 Mitchell's assembly line in the Wikipedia article and the Michell played a primary role in the Doolittle Raids and that image demonstrates how impressive America's manufacturing capabilties already were by the middle of WWII. And for some reason or another a malfunctioning part of my brain keeps calling the M3 Grant the M3 Lee; the M3 Grant shows how a little behind the curb the Americans were in tank development, with the M3 hull being a rushed and awkward interim design (before the underrated M4 Sherman). The M3 Grant still looks impressive on that training ground.

[Kenny_10_Bellys]

The US came late to the tank party. In the late 30's when the Germans were testing new alloys for hard wearing tank tracks, the US were trying to find new alloys for hard wearing horse shoes. When the Polish cavalry were decimated by Panzers during a charge, an American General put it down to poor training. No doubt he thought his horse mounted cavalry would have easily stabbed through the tank armour with their lances. They never fully caught up, and throughout the war the Germans always had the best tanks.

These colour photos really bring home the fact that those were real people back then; really working, fighting and dying. It could be someone you know, rather than an ancient black & white image you write off as being too old to connect with. They are a real eye opener.

[Thanas]

The US came late to the tank party. In the late 30's when the Germans were testing new alloys for hard wearing tank tracks, the US were trying to find new alloys for hard wearing horse shoes. When the Polish cavalry were decimated by Panzers during a charge, an American General put it down to poor training. No doubt he thought his horse mounted cavalry would have easily stabbed through the tank armour with their lances. They never fully caught up, and throughout the war the Germans always had the best tanks.

Oh god...I see you never really read any reliable history of WWII. You repeat so many myths in that statement...from "polish cavalry charging panzers" to "americans loved cavalry more than tanks".

Also, best tank is much in doubt. On an individual basis, sure, but that does not help you if you waste your resources to produce 1 tank while the enemy can produce five or six with the same effort.

[Big Orange]

The Americans in December 1942 developed the M6 Heavy Tank which was similar to the KV-1, and was ten feet high, had a long 76mm cannon, and had bastard thick 133mm armour.

[ebs2323]

I must admit the color photos make a huge differnce in the impact.

Also if i recal from... somewhere, the polish did not use lances, but Ant-tanke rifles. The horses were used to get around faster.

[Serafina]

I must admit the color photos make a huge differnce in the impact.

Also if i recal from... somewhere, the polish did not use lances, but Ant-tanke rifles. The horses were used to get around faster.

Yes, that's basically how that story originated.
The polish used cavalry as a sort of mobile infantry (which makes some sense - horses don't need fuel and are good for some terrain where trucks are lousy). That included support weapons and AT-guns.
Against tanks, they tried to set up their AT-guns for an ambush just like regular infantry does.
In that case, they got surprised and thus all the germans saw were mounted soldiers trying to disengage (rather unsucessfully).
Cue some joking and you have yourself an urban legend.

[Phantasee]

When I was studying photojournalism we checked out some of the photographers and photos that make up the collection, some real iconic stuff in there. It's also odd seeing such high-quality colour shots of an era we normal only associate with monochrome photo and film. It makes it that much more real and touching.

I posted a thread here a while back with some of the earliest colour photos ever recorded, although the technique used to produce them isn't the same as modern (or 1930s) colour film. It was quite startling to see a man selling produce, when you realize those fruits and things were over a hundred years old. There is a picture of some shah from IIRC Iran or someplace around there, decked out in all his finery. It's just not the same as B&W.

[FSTargetDrone]

I posted a thread here a while back with some of the earliest colour photos ever recorded, although the technique used to produce them isn't the same as modern (or 1930s) colour film. It was quite startling to see a man selling produce, when you realize those fruits and things were over a hundred years old. There is a picture of some shah from IIRC Iran or someplace around there, decked out in all his finery. It's just not the same as B&W.

Not just the fruit, but the fact that many of the people in some of these older pictures have been dead for decades. Bright, vibrant color photography like that looks all the more contemporary in some ways, style of dress and level of technology notwithstanding

[Simplicius]

On the subject of old-old color photographs:

In 1909 the millionaire French banker and philanthropist Albert Kahn embarked on an ambitious project to create a colour photographic record of, and for, the peoples of the world. As an idealist and an internationalist, Kahn believed that he could use the new autochrome process, the world's first user-friendly, true-colour photographic system, to promote cross-cultural peace and understanding.

Kahn used his vast fortune to send a group of intrepid photographers to more than fifty countries around the world, often at crucial junctures in their history, when age-old cultures were on the brink of being changed for ever by war and the march of twentieth-century globalisation. They documented in true colour the collapse of both the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires; the last traditional Celtic villages in Ireland, just a few years before they were demolished; and the soldiers of the First World War — in the trenches, and as they cooked their meals and laundered their uniforms behind the lines. They took the earliest-known colour photographs in countries as far apart as Vietnam and Brazil, Mongolia and Norway, Benin and the United States.

At the start of 1929 Kahn was still one of the richest men in Europe. Later that year the Wall Street Crash reduced his financial empire to rubble and in 1931 he was forced to bring his project to an end. Kahn died in 1940. His legacy, still kept at the Musée Albert-Kahn in the grounds of his estate near Paris, is now considered to be the most important collection of early colour photographs in the world.

A photographic project of this scope is already incredibly awesome, but using the Autochrome process, of which I am especially fond, pushes it to still another level. Website

[hongi]

Thank you Simplicius, the photos on that website are stunning. Things a century ago look eerily similar to now.

Can someone tell me what this is?

[FSTargetDrone]

Thank you Simplicius, the photos on that website are stunning. Things a century ago look eerily similar to now.

Can someone tell me what this is?

My guess, that has to be some sort of punishment box. It's probably very sunny (that sharp shadow suggests a strong, high sun) out, perhaps making it even worse in that box than it looks.