grist for the mill

Poverty's Palette: "In our mind's eye, much of the past exists in black and white. This is particularly true of Depression-era America, in large part because of the unforgettable monochrome images created by the New Deal-sponsored photographers who traversed the country in the 1930's and early 1940's, chronicling the lives of its citizens. About 160,000 of their pictures are collected in the archives of the Library of Congress. Less well known are the roughly 1,600 of these photographs that were shot in color -- most notably by the photographers Russell Lee and Jack Delano -- using Kodachrome film, which Kodak introduced in 1936. This month, the Library of Congress and Harry N. Abrams are making a substantial collection of these images available for the first time in a book called ''Bound for Glory: America in Color 1939-43.'' As the writer Paul Hendrickson notes in his introduction to the volume, these photos give us more than just blues and yellows and reds -- they offer ''a new and complementary way of comprehending our national identity.'' "

posted by Barry  # 1:46 PM