Colour photographs of America, 1939-1943

“These images, by photographers of the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information, are some of the only color photographs taken of the effects of the Depression on America’s rural and small town populations. The photographs are the property of the Library of Congress and were included in a 2006 exhibit Bound for Glory: America in Color.”

- Denver Post

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Thank you to the many Retronauts who sent these images to How to be a Retronaut, including Russel Tarr, and Amanda Uren.

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beckybim

October 20, 2010 at 12:36 pm · Reply

These are wonderful! What an amazing set of images. Thanks for sharing them.

elaineland

October 20, 2010 at 7:15 pm · Reply

Thanks for the wonderful evocative images,a different age , a different country…..

maluc21

April 25, 2011 at 11:19 pm · Reply

Amazing!! I enjoyed so much everyone of this pictures, i really really feel like i was there, is a very exiting feeling. Thank you and wow again!

yoda

May 8, 2011 at 2:19 am · Reply

The Vermont State Fair in Rutland is still held in September, a couple weeks after the Champlain Valley fair that usually straddles Labor Day weekend. (Also a couple weeks after school starts!)
Unfortunately, none of the series of photos taken there (and there are more) shows a good, wide view of the grounds so I can say what has or hasn’t changed in 70 years.
The residential neigborhoods on side streets around the grounds may well be pre-WW2, but the commercial development surrounding it on US 7 itself is definitely postwar!

Ken

August 11, 2011 at 11:08 pm · Reply

The one that really is sad is what appears to be the auctioning off of someone’s farm. What is supposed to happen when you don’t have a home or a way to make a living?

Klattu

February 22, 2012 at 9:46 am · Reply

Better than Hollywood

Milquetoast

March 13, 2012 at 7:34 am · Reply

Nothing’s better than Hollywood, but seeing these pictures in color is like watching old films run at their proper speed; not looking like the “Keystone Cops” all the time, which has you believing that times were different, which they weren’t. These pictures make you realize that the sky was always blue and people were people.