Saturday, July 31, 2010

Beautiful

The Denver Post has a series of "blog" entries that republish old slide photographs. In this case, it's a series from 1939-1943 or so, many from Oklahoma, Maine, and Louisiana.

Above, an Oklahoma family has dinner in their dugout home. Notice the jars of pickles and preserves next to Mama, and the Karo syrup can on the table. Also, the milk is in that big jug next to Mama's elbow, and you can see how fatty it is from the film it leaves on the glass.

A colleague turned me on to these, and I've been absorbed in them ever since. Check it out.

2 comments:

Megan said...

Amazing. It's really striking how seeing those images in color makes them all that more "real" and accessible. No. 28 is from my hometown area, btw! Very cool!

Bart said...

Love it. There's something really wonderful about how some old films and photographs can bring the past into sharp focus and lend them an emotional immediacy that you might not expect.

Looking at this photo, you could be forgiven for thinking that it was taken this year, or that this family must have been frozen in amber so that they remain unchanged to this day.

Even without a lot of emotion showing on the faces of the subjects, you are left in little doubt as to what the mood was in the room - and yet I have to wonder if the dinner was perhaps slightly more generous than usual, given the presence of a photographic journalist in the house?