Framed or unframed, desk size to sofa size, printed by us in Arizona and Alabama since 2007. Explore now.
Shorpy is funded by you. Patreon contributors get an ad-free experience.
Learn more.
Couples at square dance in McIntosh County, Oklahoma. Photograph by Russell Lee for the Farm Security Administration Office of War Information circa 1939. View full size.
This looks exactly like the effects I see on my post WWII ANSCO transparencies. Everything I took with that junk is now almost useless.
This looks exactly like the effects I see on my post WWII ANSCO transparencies. Everything I took with that junk is now almost useless.
I'm not sure which colors fade the quickest, but red fades the slowest. Which explains why the picture has a lot of red in it.
It's probably not a fault of the film or developing. Most any prints that aren't Kodachrome are going to fade at some point even in dark storage.
I have some colour photos my father took at about the same time (actually, a couple of years after this), and they also suffer from selective colour fading. The greens faded fairly early.
I don't know if it was caused by inadequate developing or by the quality of colour film before 1950 or so.
It looks too hot to have fun. or even move.
Don't all these people look sooooo happy to be there? Sheesh, none of them cracking a smile like they might be having fun!
Clearly, the man on the left would prefer to be dancing with the red-haired man on the right.
The young men look about draft age that would start the next year.
Looks like a fight afixen to start. I remember about this same time going about 40 miles in central Texas with my parents, neighbors
and 2 other knee babies in a Model A Ford coup with a rumble seat in the trunk. Helping pick cotton in the day and the grown ups dancing at night outside on a rough wood temporary dance floor lit with colored festoon lighting. The songs I remember: 'Take me back to Tulsa' and 'Who's that girl with the red dress on'. The Women served the meals and ate in the kitchen after the men finished.
... looks like he thinks the grass might be greener on t'other side a the fence!
On Shorpy:
Today’s Top 5