A switch engine on the Indiana Harbor Belt Railroad pours steam in a trainyard near the Calumet Park, Ill., stockyards, January 1943. - Jack Delano
A new Library of Congress exhibition titled "Bound for Glory: America in Color, 1939-43," featuring little-known color images taken by photographers of the Farm Security Administration and its successor federal agency, the Office of War Information, is on view through Nov. 26 in the South Gallery of the Great Hall of the Library's Thomas Jefferson Building.
Featuring 70 digital prints made from color transparencies taken between 1939 and 1943, this exhibition provides an unusual record of a period in American history previously seen only in black and white. Shot on the Eastman Kodak Co.'s Kodachrome film, which was first introduced in 1935, the photographs offer a rare color portrait of America in the prewar era.
Faro and Doris Caudill, homesteaders, Pie Town, N.M., October 1940 - Russell Lee
"These photographs form an extensive pictorial record of American life in the late 1930s and 1940s," said Librarian of Congress James H. Billington. "Viewed as a whole, the collection, which the Library acquired in 1946, documents the effects of the Depression on America's rural and small-town populations, the nation's tireless efforts to overcome economic challenges and its patriotic response to mobilization for World War II."
The original goal of the government project was to record, through documentary photographs, the ravages of the Depression in America's rural areas and was intended to spur Congress and the American public to support government relief efforts. With an improved economy, increased industrialization and the onset of World War II, the photographs increasingly focused on an America that was productive, beautiful and determined.
"They were selling the product of a strong United States, said Beverly Brannan, the Library's curator of photography.
Approximately one dozen photographers were employed by the FSA/OWI from 1935 through 1944. Many of these famed photographers—such as John Vachon, Jack Delano, Russell Lee, Marion Post Wolcott, John Collier and Arthur Rothstein—began experimenting with color film in 1939.
Left, Children stage a patriotic demonstration in Southington, Conn., May 1942; right, a street corner in Dillon, Mont., August 1942. - Fenno Jacobs and Russell Lee
According to Brannan, at first there was little interest in the subject matter or the format. "As events in recent memory passed into history, there was increased interest in the black-and-white photographs from this era," said Brannan. "Interest in the color photographs emerged in the 1970s."
The photographs were originally intended to have a narrow focus but ultimately provide a broader national record. They document not only the subjects in the pictures, but also the dawn of a new era of color photography. 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.
