Bound for Glory

There’s an exhibit on the Library of Congress website that showcases color photographs of America from 1939-1943. I love these! I posted some color photos from WWI last year, but these are a much higher quality – which is to be expected since the first set were from 1907.

All the pictures I’ve seen of my family from the 50s and 60s were all in black and white, so I just love getting to see things “in living color.”

Bound for Glory: America in Color is the first major exhibition of the little known color images taken by photographers of the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information (FSA/OWI). Comprised of seventy digital prints made from color transparencies taken between 1939 and 1943, this exhibition reveals a surprisingly vibrant world that has typically been viewed only through black-and-white images. These vivid scenes and portraits capture the effects of the Depression on America’s rural and small town populations, the nation’s subsequent economic recovery and industrial growth, and the country’s great mobilization for World War II.

The photographs in Bound for Glory, many by famed photographers such as John Vachon, Jack Delano, Russell Lee, and Marion Post Wolcott, document not only the subjects in the pictures, but also the dawn of a new era — the Kodachrome era. These colorful images mark a historic divide in visual presentation between the monochrome world of the pre-modern age and the brilliant hues of the present. They change the way we look — and think about — our past.

This one is my favorite from the collection:

Alfred T. Palmer
Woman is working on a “Vengeance” dive bomber Tennessee, February 1943
Reproduction from color slide
LC-USW361-295
LC-DIG-fsac-1a35371
FSA/OWI Collection
Prints and Photographs Division (64)

You can find more of these fabulous photos (apart from the exhibit mentioned above) here.