Captured: America in Color from 1939-1943

Enjoy everyone!

My favorite pic is #30... Oranges for 1 cent

blogs.denverpost.com...

Wow. Beautiful photos. A lot of ghosts there. I don't know why, but looking at those photos made me sort of sad. Maybe that's not the word....

I sooooo want that poster of Uncle Sam Saying "Buy War Bonds" in picture 52...

Awesome link too.

Those were amazing - thank you for posting this link. Incredible to see these in color.

i think #31 is will smith!

My father was born in 1930 and, while looking at those pictures, I was honestly taken by a feeling of connection with him. He passed in '96 so moments such as this are precious. Thank you for this post!

Wow!
that is fantastic!
maann.. very cool!
thanks soo much!

I really love photography. These pictures make me wish for a simple life before internet and complete and udder isolationism. They are breathtaking portraying so much American innocence. Where did it go?

reply to post by solarstorm

Explanation: S&F!

1 cent oranges: (say 4 x 250g [9oz] oranges to kilo) = 4 cents / kilo

Average US 1940's Wage = $1299.00 per annum

= 65 cents per hr [min wage was 43 cents per hr]

Average US 2000's Wage = $36,764 .00 per annum

Which is over 28 times what was earned in 1940's

I had trouble finding US orange prices per kilo but did find a source citing 99 cents / pound = $2.18 per kilo [2.2lbs=1kg]

That equates to 55 cents [rnded up] per 250g [9oz] orange

[edited to add following equation to clarify]
55 [cents per orange] / 28 [x inflationionary increase since 1940] = 1.96 cents... rnded up = 2 cents per orange

So oranges today [in the US] cost about twice what they did in the 1940's



Personal Disclosure: Some of those pictures look like they were taken yesterday in outback Australia! I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of middle class american families end up living out of those dugouts and eaking out what ever they can scrape up and outa the land with the sweat of their brows etc in the next few years.

edited to add equation to clarify my maths! soz

[edit on 8-8-2010 by OmegaLogos]

Those kids walking around barefoot in public, and the dirty kids in school would be considered child abuse today.

Thanks for bringing us these photo's.

Times were tough then. Looking at the pictures, there were very few that have people smiling in them, and everyone looks beat to heck. The lines in some of those faces, speak volumes.

Originally posted by Chefspicy
i think #31 is will smith!

It seemed like life was much more simple back then. No worries for electronics. Go out and do some old fashioned ball room dancing. Eat fresh fruits and veggies. Bring it back!

Wow hard to believe that was only 70 years ago.

Amazing how things have changed. Looks so rugged, yet.. it's appealing in some aspects.

Communities were closer, people talked.

I'm envious of the Shepard in the picture with his dog. How lonely but how peaceful.

How times change, people change, everything changes.. Sometimes for the best, sometimes not.

Peace.

That no #42 could almost pass as a corner-shop today, if you ignore the cars on the right hand side.

I love pictures #26, #27 and #40, as well !

#26 doesn't look too dissimilar to the Wild West !

#27 looks like a scene out of a Hitchcock film.

#40 looks like a romantic picture of an old-style shop in the rural south of the USA.

Great pics thanks for posting
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Daggumit, where are all these old pics coming from all of a sudden?
I could study those pics for hours.

I'm not quite old enough to remember these years, but I definitely remember things being much dirtier than they are now, and the photos bear that out. Certainly, children were pretty much constantly dirty, and there were no designer fashions for kids.

I suppose that as time goes on, things will continue to get cleaner and cleaner, more and more sterile. Sometimes it's good, sometimes not.

Looking at these nostalgic snapshots of the past makes me so "homesick" in the sense that I seriously wish I had been an American teenager or young adult growing up in the roaring 20s to warring 40s! A time when life moved at a slower pace, innocence was treasured and our way of life, envied the world over, was something worth fighting for! What a generation huh?!

Dunno if anyone noticed in pic number 13 how everyone looked like they were having a nice time, yet they were sweating really bad. Obviously air conditioning was not perfected yet.