Most of the photos are marked as "color reproductions from slides." Kodachrome film that could be developed into color slides was available as early as 1936.
Amazing colour photos of Depression era America
- Thread starter WillsBabe
- Start date
Most of the photos are marked as "color reproductions from slides." Kodachrome film that could be developed into color slides was available as early as 1936.
Seems so. But I'm sure they've been cleaned up or retouched in some manner. The color seems too vibrant and clean for what I suspect would've been available in a consumer-level camera given the strifes of the time.
FWIW - #65 is my favorite.
Who's to say it was a consumer level camera?
Some of the shots, like numbers 13, 14 and 15, are obviously unrestored color slides. They have the washed-out look typical of decades-old color film. The cyan and yellow dyes deteriorate faster than the magenta dye, giving the film a reddish tint. It's possible that some of the other photos have had their color digitally restored.
Angela 0077
Captain
I just had a loook at the photos l have never seen this before.
I cant beleive oranges were 1c to buy different from today with the cost of food.
It is great seeing these photos in colur when in its day it would have been black and white
i know it would have been a struggle to live in those days.
Plus buying things by tickets would have been hard and feeding a growing family would have been hard.
The men and women of thoses days makes you proud.
Great photos! Really enjoyed looking at them, even though they are from the tail end of the Depression, the worst being long over by 1940.
A couple of comments -
1. Loved reading the headlines in the photo of the newspaper office. Talk about history in pictures!
2. I was fascinated by the photo of the family in Pie Town eating dinner. I am a fan of "Depression Cooking With Clara" (YouTube, if you haven't seen her - she's a hoot!) and one of the things she mentions constantly is that meals used to be alot more about bread, starch and veggies than about meat. Meat, especially during the depression, was not an everyday occurrence. That photo seems to bear that out, which I find interesting.
3. As a fan of classic film, I have seen a lot of depression-era cinema, and it is really interesting. If you like these photos, it might be worth it to watch some of the movies from this era and superimpose those images over these. Very interesting.
A couple of comments -
1. Loved reading the headlines in the photo of the newspaper office. Talk about history in pictures!
2. I was fascinated by the photo of the family in Pie Town eating dinner. I am a fan of "Depression Cooking With Clara" (YouTube, if you haven't seen her - she's a hoot!) and one of the things she mentions constantly is that meals used to be alot more about bread, starch and veggies than about meat. Meat, especially during the depression, was not an everyday occurrence. That photo seems to bear that out, which I find interesting.
3. As a fan of classic film, I have seen a lot of depression-era cinema, and it is really interesting. If you like these photos, it might be worth it to watch some of the movies from this era and superimpose those images over these. Very interesting.
I'm not quite sure what you mean by “buying things by tickets.” If you're referring to ration books and coupons, we didn't have those in 1940. Rationing of consumer goods was a wartime measure during World War II.
I wouldn't say that 'lots' of movies from the 20's are in color. There are some, but they are by no means the norm in silent film - unless you count the color 'tinted' films, which are not really color films in the sense that we know today (and thus not comparative to these photos) since the whole picture was tinted blue, or pink or yellow whatever. These films did not differentiate colors. They only tinted whole pictures with color - blue, for example, was often used for night, yellow for the heat of the day, etc.
Further, Hollywood was not releasing 'scores' of color movies by 1930 (unless you count the tinted ones). Again, there were some shorts here and there and portions of feature films on occasion while they were experimenting with three-color Technicolor (in the early-to-mid 1930's), but it wasn't until the end of the 1930's that the big studios were releasing big budget feature pictures in 100% three-color Technicolor. 1938's The Adventures of Robin Hood was the first released by Warner Brothers, for example. And MGM's first major feature released completely in Technicolor was also in 1938 - Jeanette MacDonald & Nelson Eddy in Sweethearts, IIRC.
I own both of these movies, and the color in them is very much comparable to the photos highlighted in this thread. But I have seen only a couple of bits from silents which are even marginally comparable to the color used here.
Just a bit of clarification there.
