[Leica] Re: Depression FSA Kodachromes

[abridge at dcn.org (Adam Bridge)]

On Monday, May 31, 2004 B. D. Colen thoughtfully wrote:

>
>However...I was intrigued by Adam's comment about the images being
>familiar to him, and reminded of him of growing up in the 50s - I have
>long thought that photographs from the 30s to the early 60s have a very
>similar look, which is to say that clothing, cars, etc., were quite
>similar. If I think back to the late 50s, or look at photos from that
>era, particularly pictures of kids, the photos could have been taken
>pretty much any time during the almost 30 previous years. The big break
>in terms of clothing and general "look" came in the mid-60s,and if you
>look at photos from the late 60s, early 70s, and compare them to photos
>from even five, six or seven years earlier, it's almost like you're
>looking at something from another century.
>

I've often wondered about the transitions in clothing and culture. I first
started wondering about it when watching, of all things, Mystery, on PBS when
they did Agatha Christie novels and Peter Wimsey stories.

You look at what people were wearing before WW I, and then what they were
wearing in the late 20s - and it's radically different.

And you're right - there's a real difference between the 30s through 50s and
what I could call "Contemporary" clothing.

Last evening I watched "The Hours" (wonderful, wonderful film) one part of which
is supposed to take place in early 50s California. (Looks a whole lot more like
early 50s Florida to me) There was something about the colors that profoundly
reminded me of my childhood - that is they got it right. I've gone back and
looked at a few photos and they have the same color pallette.

Now I see my father in his business suits and they are as stylish today as they
were then (to my eye) although I completely reject the three-button sylish
suit-coats that are big today -- to me they look like something out of the
Soviet Union in the 50s. But my mother's outfits are so clearly a product of the
40s, 50s and 60s.

I admit that I have adopted the much brighter colors which have become current
though. <grin>

Adam