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Ransom Riggs
Amazing 70-year-old color photos
by Ransom Riggs - January 17, 2008 - 11:22 AM

Sometimes looking at old photographs makes me think of this exchange between comic-strip hero Calvin and his dad:

Calvin: Dad, how come old photographs are always black and white? Didn’t they have color film back then?
Dad: Sure they did. In fact, those old photographs are in color. It’s just the world was black and white then.
Calvin: Really?
Dad: Yep. The world didn’t turn color until sometime in the 1930s, and it was pretty grainy color for a while, too.
Calvin: But then why are old PAINTINGS in color?! If the world was black and white, wouldn’t artists have painted it that way?
Dad: Not necessarily. A lot of great artists were insane.

As absurd as it sounds, there is a kind of psychological truth to it — having seen mostly black-and-white pictures of the world pre-1960 or so (I’m not counting Technicolor movies), I begin to imagine the past unfolding in monochrome. Every once in a while, though, a really old color photo made with some obscure, early color process will slip through and blow my mind.

But this really takes the cake: the Library of Congress has just created a Flickr page, on which they’ve posted nearly 2,000 color slides — many of them hauntingly beautiful. The photographers worked for the Farm Security Administration and the Office of War Information, for whom many famous black-and-white pictures were taken around the same time (the iconic “Migrant Mother,” for instance).

But rather than sending you off to pick through thousands of these photos on Flickr — something of a laborious process — we’ve compiled our favorites here. These are portraits almost as compelling as “Migrant Mother,” but even more vivid — almost hyper-real — for their eye-popping color. (In fact, they hardly seem like historical photos at all.) For whatever reason, they’ve remained obscure until now, and we thought they deserved a little extra attention.
husky.jpg
“This husky member of a construction crew building a new 33,000-volt electric power line into Fort Knox is performing an important war service, Ft. Knox, Ky. Thousands of soldiers are in training there, and the new line from a hydroelectric plant at Louisville is needed to supplement the existing power supply.” 1940

boilermaker.jpg
A boilermaker at a Chicago train yard, 1942

boy.jpg
Boy near Cincinnati, Ohio, 1942

woman_aircraft_worker.jpg
“Woman aircraft worker, Vega Aircraft Corporation, Burbank, Calif. Shown checking electrical assemblies.” 1942

irene.jpg
“Mrs. Irene Bracker, mother of two children, employed at the roundhouse as a wiper, Clinton, Iowa.” 1943

rural-schoolkids.jpgRural school children, San Augustine County, Texas, 1943.

puerto_rico.jpg
Farm worker, Puerto Rico, 1941.

carpenter.jpg
“A carpenter at the TVA’s new Douglas dam on the French Broad River, Tenn. This dam will be 161 feet high and 1,682 feet ong, with a 31,600-acre reservoir area extending 43 miles upstream. With a useful storage capacity of approximately 1,330,000 acre-feet, this reservoir will make possible the addition of nearly 100,000 kw. of continuous power to the TVA system in dry years and almost 170,000 kw. in the average year.” 1942

harnesses.jpg
“Making harnesses, Mary Saverick stitching, Pioneer Parachute Company Mills, Manchester, Conn.” 1942

square_dance.jpg
“Couples at square dance, McIntosh County, Oklahoma,” 1939.

tank-driver.jpg
“Tank driver, Ft. Knox, Ky.” 1942?

shepherd.jpg
“Shepherd with his horse and dog on Gravelly Range, Madison County, Montana,” August, 1942.

mechanic.jpg
Mechanic, 1943.

carbon_plant1.jpg
“Worker at carbon black plant, Sunray, Texas,” 1940.

Comments (88)
  1. It’s funny, but color photos make the past seem more real, somehow.

    Great post!

  2. Loads of photos like these can be seen at:

    http://www.shorpy.com

    Old photos from the civil war through about 1950. –RN

  3. Last picture = wow!

  4. Wow.. those are amazing. I really does make the past seem more real. I wish I had photos of my family members from back then in color.

  5. Wow! Those photos are fantastic! They’re almost like an anachronism they’re so clear and vivid. *history geek moment* very, very, very cool.

  6. *swoon*
    History. Photography.
    Historical Photography.
    Historical Photography in COLOR?
    *swoon*
    Great post!

  7. very very awesome post!

  8. I guess this is repetitive at this point, but this is awesome! I’m a student of 19th century history and consequently spend a lot of time with black-and-white photos. It would be so amazing to see them in this kind of color!

  9. re: “make the past seem more real”

    Am I the only one that feels like it makes the past seem fake? Like it was just a TV show.

    Not that I don’t appreciate these and the work that went into them. There’s just something so authentic about a black and white photo–for me anyway.

  10. One thing these photos show me, is that current generations are a bunch of, for lack of a better word, wussies. My grandfather worked in a factory making machetes and knives for 40 years. Never once did I ever here him complain about how hard his job was or how hard he had to work to make a living. Now you kids get off my damn lawn.

  11. Nicole –

    Well, these pictures are by no means candids … maybe their lack of spontaneity is what’s making them seem less “real.” A lot of them are lit, highly posed, etc. Almost painterly!

  12. Funny story (and true): My mother and grandmother were looking at old pictures of my grandmother’s wedding. Naturally, the pictures were in black and white. My mom asked her mother “What color did your bridesmaids wear?” My grandmother looked at the pictures for a few seconds, then said, in all seriousness, “I don’t think we HAD color back then.”

  13. Another vote of awesome! Those colors seem so rich…

  14. I like these images. I do find it curious that the Irene Bracker one is incredibly pale–do they know if it’s faded, or if that’s the way it was printed or shot, or what?

    Most of the photos look amazing, though. The tank driver and boilermaker both look like they could be from period films made today, and the carbon black plant worker looks like he could be in either “Apocalypto” or “There Will Be Blood.” It’s not often that people in historical photos could get such jobs in movies.

  15. Funny but at first I thought the boilermaker photo was a studio still of Peter Fonda in Grapes of Wrath!

    These are amazing photos, especially the children. Somehow black and whites of kids from that era always made them look a little less real. These photos bring the children alive. They look like they could be from almost any time.
    Thanks for the post!

  16. Sillstaw –

    Re the Irene Bracker photo, I think she looks a little washed out for two reasons:

    1) The photographer’s reflecting bright sunlight right at her, and

    2) She’s wearing lots of makeup! That’s part of what I found amazing about that particular photo … she must’ve talked the photographer into letting her put on makeup before the shot (or, perhaps, he talked her into it), and it stands in such stark contrast to her grimy shirt.

  17. i agree that colour photos make them seem like shots out of period movies. i also think of the past in black and white or sepia tones. some of these shots look horribly fake (the carpenter with the blue sky background) but some of them really do make the past seem more real (children, the women, the coal worker). i realize that they are probably not fakes, but to my modern-day perspective and past experiences (the way my brain has been “trained” to see things) they do look like movie stills.

    very interesting post.

  18. These photos are striking. The color seems interesting at first, but after looking for a minute or two the quality and clarity of the photos become apparent. Other photos from the time, beyond being black and white, are often small and grainy. These are high ‘pixle’ count, although pixles didnt exist at the time. Marvelous.

  19. Most of them look like something Norman Rockwell painted.

  20. I am amazed at the color and clarity–they seem almost surreal at first! The last picture is amazing . . . and it surprised me when I read the caption, as I am from near Sunray, TX–both little towns in the Texas Panhandle. Yay for the Library of Congress!

  21. These are simply stunning! They seem to add a whole other dimension of emotion to them, at least for me.

  22. I just went through a lot of those pictures… all I can say is WOW.
    Check the whole thing out if you can.. the Pie Town pictures are spiffy, the story of Pie Town is a treat too.
    My employer does not thank you but I do! ;)

  23. incredible quality and content
    just another reason to assert that film is not dead and still worth shooting today!!!

    shoot more film IMHO

  24. If you like these photos (which are way rad), you should check out the work of the Russian photographer Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky, which you can find tons of info on Wikipedia, including some pretty good links.

  25. Wow! Loved the pick of the lady in Burbank, CA. That’s my hometown!

  26. Beautiful! My fave is the little boy in Cincinnati. It could have been taken yesterday… except for the hat.

    In the first photo, the worker is labeled ‘husky.’ Times have changed, eh? What year was the Big Mac invented?

  27. One reason the color pops on these phtographs is that they were almost certainly taken on Kodachrome film. Slight underexposure on Kodachrome really saturates the colors. Although film isn’t dead, Kodachrome practically is. The last time I checked there was only one place that was processing this film in the world, Dwayne’s Photo in Kansas. Even Kodak stopped processing it in 2006.

  28. We have been recently been going through my grandparent’s old slides from the 30’s – 60’s. They are all in color. It is so astounding to see all of the colors of that world come to life after looking at so many thousands of the black and white ones from the same time period.

    The woman bent over the electrical wiring looks like my Italian grandmother. She grew up in the “always have your lipstick on” era. Before she died, last March, she made a neighbor friend promise to make sure that she had her lipstick on before the medical examiner came.

  29. I particularly like the Montana dog.

  30. oh my god. i have fallen in love with these and the ones from http://www.shorpy.com.
    im definitely buying a print of one. there are so many beautiful ones to choose from!

  31. Absolutely beautiful. Thanks for the Shorpy link, too.
    Yall should check out a show called “The Color of War” on the History Channel. The rare color footage is accompanied by the reading of letters from servicemen who were fought in the specific battle or area.
    And yall are right, color definitely does make it seem that more real.

  32. It sure is odd seeing 1940 in color.
    One time when we were talking about color and b&w, I joked to my mother, “Wasn’t it boring years ago when everything was black and white?” as if I thought real life was B&W.

    A documentary on PBS had film footage taken during WW2 of a street with bombed buildings. The color footage was so crisp, clear, and sharp that it looked as if it was recently shot footage using restored cars and people wearing reproduction clothing.

  33. p.s. It was a street in Germany.

  34. These are all so gorgeous!

  35. Wow.

    This is kinda like seeing really really old color footage of baseball or football games from the 30s-50s. You get so used to seeing that world in shades of sepia that you forget it really was in color.

    Thank you for a really neat post.

  36. Just a quick follow-up about the film used for these photos. I’ve determined at least two are definitely on Kodachrome, the boilermaker and the worker at the carbon black plant. These photographs were taken on 4″x5″ sheet film, and can be identified as Kodachrome by the notches on the top edge. This is also the reason they have higher detail than most of the other photographs, the film used was much larger than the others, which appear to be on 35mm.
    Ransom commented that some of the photos look posed and are clearly being lit. That was absolutely necessary. When Kodachrome was released in 1935, it had an equivalent ISO of 8. That means in direct sunlight the shutter speed would be 1/8 of a second at f/16. Too slow to capture motion, and the camera couldn’t be hand-held either. If you compromised on the aperture, you could get 1/60 of a second or perhaps a little faster.
    Also the amount of detail has been commented on. It’s been estimated that in order to capture the same amount of detail as a 35mm Kodachrome, 25 megapixels would be required. For 4″x5″ Kodachrome it would require over 370 megapixels, by my rough estimation.
    If you like these pictures, you may be interested in the book “Bound for Glory: America in Color 1939-43″, currently available on Amazon at an unbelievable price for a hardcover.

  37. Wow, I thought I was the only one who could only imagine the past in black and white! I once read a newspaper article that my grandmother saved from 1959, about my dad (13 at the time) saving my uncle (4) from drowning when he fell into a hole in a frozen lake. The article mentions my uncle’s red coat, and it’s the only thing in my mind in color!

    Actually, now that I think about it, it’s really only from around the mid-1800s to the mid-1900s or so that we see this way, isn’t it? Does anyone here imagine the renaissance in black and white?

  38. A guy toured Russia in 1910 and took photos in red, green and blue. Put together they give full colour images of the period so they’re similar to these but even earlier. You can see them here: http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/

  39. I like the black and white photo’s better as they give more feeling to the times.

  40. I agree that some of them look pretty fake but some look real and those are wonderful.

  41. They look publicity stills for a new war/depression era movie coming out.

  42. The picture of the shepherd with his horse and dog was from my family’s ranch! My parents took over the ranch in 1949 and turned it into a cattle ranch- my dad hated sheep. I grew up there until I was 15. I know the exact spot the photo was taken- we used to picnic and get our Christmas trees up on the Gravellies! Way cool! Thanks!

  43. My five year old was watching a black and white film with me. Like Calvin, it puzzled her. She asked, “Are those people made of cardboard?”

  44. What is real and what is fake? These photos were taken 70 years ago in color, as color was revealed to us then; deep muted colors. We have gone from Black & White to Color, to Technicolor, to High Definition Color, which to me does not reflect true color as seen through the human eyes. Pretty soon there will be lots of depressed zombies walking around because the real colored world cannot reflect their HD color perception. Are we evolving into those alien creatures with Huge Black Eyes? Will Mental Floss be a contributor to the expansion of the head to accomodate our future brain? Stay tuned to next weeks, “Are we Aliens?” Just kidding folks… just kidding…

  45. Hey guys,

    I think some of them look “fake” to some people because they’re heavily lit, in the same way that movies were lit back then. Bright background behind your subject? Shoot a huge light at him/her to bring the subject up to the same exposure. Which looks kinda fake/movieish to the eye.

  46. Great photos, but I would argue that these are post depression contrary to the headline in the editor’s picks.

    I think WWII started in 1939 and the US involvement began in 1942, which is generally regarded in economics circles as the end of the depression era.

  47. Don’t forget the autochrome process, patented in 1903.

  48. These pictures are beautiful! It is true that it makes the past seem more real. When I was little when watching black and white shows I thought that is how people saw one another. It was hard to comprehend that they were “In color”

    I love MENTAL FLOSS–great magazine, great website : )

  49. Amazing special effects.

    They look so…real!

  50. darn it, there aren’t any “Depression Era” photos there. All New Deal era photos, when the government was hiring people like photographers just to distribute money. That’s how socialism works, money isn’t wasted when it employs people to stimulate the economy. And sometimes a masterpiece happens, like these pictures.

  51. Couples square dance is black and white, right?

  52. I looked and immediately thought

    Kodachrome!

    Thanks for confirming this.

    ——————-
    Kodachrome
    They give us those nice bright colors
    They give us the greens of summers
    Makes you think all the worlds a sunny day, oh yeah
    I got a nikon camera
    I love to take a photograph
    So mama dont take my kodachrome away
    ———–
    Paul Simon / Kodachrome

  53. Color makes it seem less, well, depressing. (Whether they’re actually from the deppresion or not)

    Liv, we don’t picture pre-1800 eras in black and white because the images we have from that time are color paintings, not black and white photographs

  54. Color makes it seem less, well, depressing. (Whether they’re actually from the deppresion or not)

    Liv, we don’t picture pre-1800 eras in black and white because the images we have from that time are color paintings, not black and white photographs

  55. While quite interesting, I’m not finding these images all that remarkable.

    How about the movies “The Wizard of Oz” or “Gone With The Wind”, both made in 1939? Half of the first was in color, ALL of the second.

  56. Very cool, but what’s going on with that construction worker at the dam? The light isn’t right. It’s like a film set.

    The sky is clear and there should be plenty of ambient light, but the shadows are dramatic and the specular highlights on the helmet tell you there are other light sources.

    Weird.

  57. These are remarkable!

  58. What are you talking about? I was born in 1940 and there were lots of colour photos around, though most were b&w. No wonder there’s so much Alzheimer’s – the whole damn culture has Alzheimer’s.

  59. This is wonderful! Thanks so much for compiling these photos, it was a real treat.

  60. this was amazing! though this has been said before, it bears repeating – seeing these photos in color really brings the past to life for me. great article!

  61. That exchange between Calvin and his dad
    reminds me of something one of my high school friends said. She said that when she was younger, she asked her Dad, “When you were little, was everything in black and white?”

  62. JaneM;
    That would be “Henry” Fonda in Grapes of Wrath. And I thought the same thing :)

  63. Im actually having a hard time believing these… they seem too high quality for the time period in which they were taken.. but… they are awesome pictures.

    (OH! And that dude from picture #2 totally looks like Dr. Yinsen from the Iron Man movie!)

  64. I love these photos, never gets old!

  65. Fake. Man working at TVA has the shading on the dam all wrong. Doesn’t match with the sunlight shining off of his hard hat. If it was the photographer’s light source, there wouldn’t be shadow on the structure. Also the clouds are wrong. Both cirrius and cumulus are shown and appear to be at the same elevation.

    Most of the photos appear to be “colorized” much the same way that many black and white movies have been color enhanced.

  66. When I clicked on this article, I totally thought of that Calvin and Hobbes strip and then I saw it on the top!

  67. i really like these pictures, really cool, the only thing i dont like is the shopping of the skies in a lot of these that make it seem less raw and more like a painting, other than that amazing

  68. wowowowowowowowowowowow!!beautiful!i love vintage and these look like they should be blown up and hanging in expensive art museums :]

  69. As a Journeyman Boilermaker myself, I can appreciate what those who went before me had to endure, as evidenced by the photograph of the boilermaker from 1942 Chicago depicted above.

    Times were so much more difficult for everyone in the early days of America’s industrial age, and I hope that people appreciate what we have because of battles that union workers and others fought. Things such as the 8 hour day, 40 hour work week, lunch and rest periods, safety in the workplace, child labor laws, pensions, and fairness in the workplace and other benefits.

    Thanks for the memories with these photo’s.

  70. I believe that the strength of photography begins and ends with the feeling and the honesty of the photographer.

  71. My generation, thank you. human pictures that are not messed with, are pure art in the face. Ache’

  72. these are AMAZING. i really dig the last two.

  73. These are great! I have color photos of my dad at one year old in 1935 on the beach in South Jersey, with the date drawn in the sand beside him. Of course, my granddad was a camera buff… but even Hitler didn’t have much color in those days. Amazing! Side note- my bro recently “colorized” another old family photo from that era, and it’s possible for a pro to get really accurate with the colors.

  74. some of these look like stills from movies.

  75. Amazing is the word, indeed, how wonderful to see this old color photos, it would be interesting to have some background information on process and development but this may prove impossible or difficult to retrieve for all of them. I’ll come back to these for sure.

  76. This is a real awesome collection.

  77. ‘A carpenter at the TVA’s new Douglas dam on the French Broad River, Tenn’

    I am sorry, but this shot looks like it was shot in a studio with a backdrop of the sky. The lighting is VERY odd for being outside.

  78. Bee-uuut-ifuuuul!

  79. I, too, thought the TVA worker on the damn with the bright blue sky looked like it was shot in a studio. I know that it probably wasn’t, but it looks so rich and fake.

  80. There are color photos made by Frank Hurley during the ill-fated expedition of Shakleton to the south pole. That was 1914-1917. See them at

    sl.nsw.gov.au/discover_collections/natural_world/antarctica/antarctica/anta_shackleton
    (To see this put a triple w before it)

  81. Tine in a bottle, no,but frozen forever in these great pics.

  82. simply amazing. brings our history back to life.

  83. Great to see these in colour but remembering the movie ,The Grapes of Wrath there is no resemblance to this man and Henrey Fonda.The thing I find remarkable is that the one of the carpenter seems to almost have a 3D effect.It was great seeing these and wonder with the ability to do this -why were we limited to seeing B&W back then?Was it too exspencive or what?Thanks for this opportunity.

  84. The ones identified as actual Kodachrome (of blessed memory) also look like they were taken with a Leica lens; just superb detail! Of course most of these are posed and lit, and probably some of these people are models. The pictures look like they may have been used for “Support the War Effort” campaigns. Only commercial photographers’ and government documentarians’ employers had the money to buy & develop color film. My fave is the Cincinnati boy. No one does depth of field like that any more!

  85. Great collection of old photos! Thank you very much for sharing this post. I make photo restoration and colorization, but even I didn’t understand that these photos were initially black and white! Great work.

  86. I too am an amateur photographer, and seeing these pictures makes me wonder what images will be left of the last ten years or so.

    Consider the fact that these pictures, posed or not, exist because
    • someone took time to take them.
    • they then produced a physical, durable image.
    • someone else took then time to save them.

    Even in today’s ‘hurry-up’, digitized world the monumental, significant events will certainly still be chronicled…..but I wonder how many shots of everyday life already have been taken, shared, and then deleted, and are now lost forever.

    As the science of archaeology has already shown us, it is the ordinary events of everyday life and the detritus of daily living that are more likely to shed information on a culture than all the monuments ever raised and studied.

    -”BB”-

    reCaptcha – the exorcist

  87. That last pic…

    Damn.
    Men and women were hardcore back in the day.

    Love it.

  88. The Library’s photostream now has close to 7,500 photos, including a set of color photochroms from 1890-1900 Europe.

    Here’s another Library of Congress exhibit, on unique color photography from Russia in the early 1900’s. The photographer Prokudin-Gorskii made his own three lens RGB camera and a projector to match so he could create a slideshow of color photos. The Library digitized the items to be able to combine and display/print them for the first time in decades.

    Some fantastic photos, like

    View the entire online exhibit at:
    http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/

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