The Library of Congress has its own Flickr account, and if you have a few hours to spend, I highly recommend flipping through their photo albums.
These color photos from the 1930’s and 40’s are so striking and intriguing. When it first came into existence color film was $5 a roll. Minimum wage was 25¢ an hour.
More amazing old timey photos can be found at the Flickr Commons site. You can learn more about the program here. (Thanks George!)
Thanks for the facts, Erika!
Gary G
on 14 Apr 08Amazing how it doesn’t look too different than today … shows the power of comparing a color photo v. the b/w we are used to for old pictures.
Chris Stout
on 14 Apr 08I saw this exhibit when it passed through my town. Absolutely stunning. If there’s still a touring version, I’d highly recommend checking it out.
Mike
on 14 Apr 08These are great, thanks. Color brings a whole new level of reality to the picture.
These remind me of the Gorsky collection. For those that aren’t familiar, Gorsky did color photography in Russia in the early 1900s using glass plates.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Mikhailovich_Prokudin-Gorskii
It’s really hard to believe those pictures were taken 100 years ago.
Vlad
on 14 Apr 08Very interesting photos, some of the color ones give a great example of how life was back then. There was a picture of a family eating, and it’s obviously very different from the junk we eat now… The group had a large jar of milk and all sorts of interesting food. There’s another picture of a building’s side with soda advertisements, and it reminded me of modern-day Mexico.
Tom G.
on 15 Apr 08It makes you wonder about how history will view our era differently than the past because so much about us is recorded.
This struck me when I recently heard the earliest known audio recording from the 1800’s.
All these old photos and other recording technology really bring the past to life.
Steve L
on 17 Apr 08What a strange co-incidence, last weekend we visited Waddesdon Manor here in the UK. At this former homestead of the Rothschilds they have an exhibition of Autochrome pictures from the early 20th century. The Autochrome process itself is really interesting, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autochrome_Lumi%C3%A8re and extremely impressive given these colour pictures have survived 100 years.
This discussion is closed.