Rare Color Photographs from the Early 40s

reply to post by MrBigDog1974
When did the depression officially finish. I was under the impression it finished the started of WW2 (probably wrong).

Just most are dated during WW2 & most photos are of people working not homeless/jobless people.

Not contradicting you just curious as to when depression officially finished because the war started in 1939 & America didn't enter until Dec 1941. For those 2 years America was selling to both Britian & Germany so that must have had some influence in creating enough josb in the US to end the depression.

Photography during and before this time was imaged on glass plate negatives as large as 8 X 10 inches, which accounts for the incredible detail. Color photography was done by taking 3 filtered photos and developing them with the appropriate color dies, essentially.

Here's an image from the turn of last's century from a Russian photographer. Note the clarity of the terrane but the clouds moved slightly between the 3 exposures appearing slightly blurred. Amazing in itself a filter could be changed 3 times without moving the camera focus in itself!



More Russian images here.

High resolution black and white photos from Pittsburgh 1900 here.

reply to post by acrux


No worries. The Depression officially finished right around the start of WWII. These are basically Depression-era photographs, even if they don't fall in the 1929-1939 range per se.

I mainly used the title of the article as the link title. Hope you enjoy the pictures!

it's so weird... in my mind this whole era existed in black and white... when it's in color it seems so much more real... like it's closer... more tangible... less of an enigma...

it's as if it could be us in those pictures as easily as it was them...

Putting a real person to Rosie the riveter made this whole thread worth it.




Not just a slogan or a mascot, but real people doing their jobs.

[\nice..thaanks

reply to post by MrBigDog1974


Really awesome, historic photos, and i dig them, but.....

that's not from the Great Depression. It's after...

:/

Originally posted by scobro
Awesome photos1 Really bring that era to life!

Incidentaly,anyone else notice the UFO in the 14th row of the photos,the African American tenant house?

That's a blemish on the photo. Quite distinct......but only recognisable as such if you have ever used film and developed your own photos quite extensively.

Great post.....That may look like hard times but those people are a lot happier than us right now....That's a Sunday picnic to what is coming to Amerika...

These are really great!! I've seen a couple of these before but most of them were new. I really enjoy looking at colour photography from that time it somehow makes it seem more real. Black and white photos sometimes have this unreal look to them. These remind me of another set I saw a while ago of colour photos taken during the early 1900's.

Its pretty obvious a lot of people reply before reading the whole thread and his thread isn't even two pages long yet.

What a wonderful collection, thank you for sharing.

It really brings that era closer to our own. We are so used to seeing B&W pictures. Seeing these in color reminds you that they lived in a world just like our own. They were people just like us.

For some reason, this woman jumped out of the picture and captivated me.
Nothing else in the picture mattered. Just the look on her face.

I can't stop staring back at it.

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/155d4190bf99.png[/atsimg]

The saddest thing about those pictures to me...

Those little kids eating outside on the ground have a more complete meal than I get to eat a lot of the time. And THAT was supposed to be the *great* depression.

reply to post by makeitso


I thought the same.. she is pretty.. and dressed in all white.. while the other folks are mainly men and dressed in dark clothing.. plus her looking in the camera.. ehh she has it all going on.

Thanks for posting, OP.

My great grandma has told me some great and sad stories about growing up during the great depression. It amazes me to see pictures from that era in color. It changes my point of view. S+F

Originally posted by marg6043
The photos look too cristal clear to be natural, still they are amazing, great find

Not really...you should see the ones from 1908 !!!

Somebody made a post around here somewhere.

But to think these weren't even popular until the 70's when they were around and known about since the 1905-1908......

great pics

it just shows people don't change, only clothes, price and technology.

these pictures should be classified. black and white somehow makes people seem more innocent and wholesome.

black and white pictures also made people from that era look more like victims.

the pictures look like they were taken yesterday. and what's scary, that's the generation that started world war 2 and killed millions and millions of people.

never had seen these before, very nice to see color from what i akways knew as a grey spot in modern human history.

but if that was the great depression, i dont know, somehow i would have prefered to live that one than this current one...

people were much more simple and humble yes and you can tell, but oddly(or not) enough from all those pictures i can pretty much tell that those people were happier, healthier and with damned better teeth than us now, with all our comodities.

makes us think if we really have progressed that much, or we just became more entertained.

those people had less to live with yeah, but they also needed alot less than us to just go by.

Some of those photos are 1942 and 1943.

The depression ended officially on December 1941 but the effects would obviously stilllinger in places such as the photos were taken.

I was amazed, I'd forgotten the depression lasted that long....