Pre-WWII America in Color

December 7, 2006 11:19 AM

Kodachrome color photographs of American life, dating from the 1930s, 40s, & 50s. Selections via DailyKos.
posted by ijoshua (12 comments total)

Oh for the innocent days gone by when the Machine Beasts of the Illuminati openly walked the land, spreading their tentacles across the virginal West and striding over rivers and hills.
posted by freebird at 11:34 AM on December 7, 2006

Wow those pictures are really amazing. It looks like a totally foreign country - in a lot of ways I guess it was. Thanks ijoshua!
posted by wfrgms at 11:43 AM on December 7, 2006

The pics at the Selections link are out of focus and lack variety.
posted by hal9k at 12:46 PM on December 7, 2006

triple | double [ish].

Excellent project though. Ex-IUB DLIB represent!
posted by Fezboy! at 1:57 PM on December 7, 2006 [1 favorite]

Yeah, I know. Digital.

Yeah, I know. Velvia.

But nothing had the look of Kodachrome II 25.
posted by eriko at 4:08 PM on December 7, 2006

Don't try to link to the images on memory.loc.gov, all the URLs are tied to your session. The only linkable pages are the metadata overview ones, and even those are nebulous. Often you'll have to link to search results.
posted by blasdelf at 11:13 PM on December 7, 2006

These are great, thanks. The DailyKos site was the only place I stayed on for long though, was the memory.loc.gov was a jumbled mess to navigate.
posted by tiger yang at 7:40 AM on December 8, 2006

Incredible photos! Thanks.

It is too bad the websites are such a drag to navigate, but, better than nothing. I thought the Kos selection was actually really great. Only one shot was out of focus, and that was probably a hand held long exposure.
posted by JBennett at 7:51 AM on December 8, 2006

I first saw Cushman's photos through a post on Mefi 3 years ago that Fezboy! linked to. I wish more old timers collections would be scanned and posted to the web. A few other collections are at:

Georgia State University
University of Wisconsin Milwaukee
posted by JJ86 at 8:29 AM on December 8, 2006

The University of Washington. Great archive of Pacific NW imagery.
posted by marvin at 1:01 PM on December 8, 2006

Ah - lame we can't link directly. My little rant above was related to a photo I thought really cool: if you're interested, it comes up as the top hit if you search for "shasta", "dam", and "buckets".

Great post, thanks.
posted by freebird at 2:36 PM on December 8, 2006

Great post. Living in Atlanta, the Georgia State University archive was particularly compelling. Seeing Landmarks like The Varsity that are still thriving today, as well as what looks like the construction of Interstates 75 and 85--two major arteries not just for Atlanta but for the Eastern seaboard--were fascinating.

And the color ones, man, it brings out the past like B&W just can't. It's always been interesting to me as someone who has only lived in a time when everything is in color that whenever I think about life in the pre-color-film era it feels black and white in my head. I can't imagine it any other way, so seeing it in color is stark and shocking!

Flagged as fantastic...thanks again!
posted by jckll at 4:27 PM on December 9, 2006