Early 1900s in Colour | Hacker News Reader

Early 1900s in Colour

citynoise.org

123 pointshelwr27 comments

Here's my favorite collection of old color photographs, The Cushman Collection:

http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/cushman/browse/yearBrowse.js...

"Charles Weever Cushman, amateur photographer and Indiana University alumnus, bequeathed approximately 14,500 Kodachrome color slides to his alma mater. The photographs in this collection bridge a thirty-two year span from 1938 to 1969, during which time he extensively documented the United States as well as other countries."

One of my favorites:

http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/collections/cushman/full/P02...

The collection can be a bit overwhelming, but for a good overview, look here:

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=142692

In related spirit, colour photographs of early 1900s tsarist Russia by Prokudin-Gorsky are also pretty amazing.

Edit: and most if not all are in public domain. Sample: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Mikhailovich_Prokud...

I wanted to post the same thing. The quality of those pictures is incredible.

You can find all reconstructed images here: http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/

Amazing. The past doesn't even seem much like the past when it is in colour.

There was a time I thought the old world was black and white.

PS: And I was happy to see a picture of my country (Sri Lanka) there :).

If you start to read Latin and Ancient Greek, you'll get a sense that human beings have had most of the same mundane concerns for the past thousands of years. Some of the love poetry of Catullus, for example, sounds like it could have been written by a precocious tween.

Well, it was written by a moody 22-24-year-old. :)

What about those of us who speak undead languages? 1000 year old Arabic reads like any other modern formal essay. It's really hard to let go of the past when it's so vividly present. We hold grudges against nations and tribes that no longer exist.

The first photo, of The Plaza Hotel in NYC is really stark compared to how it looks now. It's not even close to being the tallest building in that area now, but then it looks like it was two or three times as tall almost as anything else.

The phallic drive knows no bounds ;P

What makes pictures like these seem alien is the clothing. Back then, even farmers dressed better than people today.

I was amazed by that, too. Goes to show that fashion-wise we live in a global and monocultural era.

It is amazing how different everyone looks from one another. It can be pretty tough to pick where someone is from these days. Everyone's dress seems so distinctive.

Or, getting taken in a picture was so rare than people dressed well for it.

Most of us in our best clothes would not compare favourably to the richness on display by these average people in their best dress.

However, I wonder how much variety of style was worn in previous generations. Certainly within the span of living memory the current period is the most vividly variegated explosion of unrestrained style, but that is only compared to the monotone conformism of post-war industrialism.

Were there perhaps places and times before us with a similar or higher level of embracing stylistic inventiveness?

Yeah, but they only had two outfits. Notice how beat up and formless everyone's boots are.

Can anybody explain exactly what is happening in this picture from Mongolia? http://citynoise.org/upload/42145.jpg

The 4th comment reads: "That picture appeared in the May '22 NatGeo with the caption 'A Mongolian Woman Condemned to Die of Starvation'"

Wow, now that's cruel. I notice there's bowls around the ground -- did they place food where she couldn't reach it just for extra cruelty's sake?

These photographs are over 100 years old, yet they still have someone's obnoxious copyright on them. Intellectual property makes me sick.

If I'm counting correctly these photographs still retain copyright to the end of the year (in Sweden), as Albert Kahn died in 1940. Copyright in Sweden is generally uphold up until 70 years after authors death.

All the pictures from the Musée Albert Kahn are actually autochromes. I found the way of making those technically very interesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autochrome

Its sounds odd but I sometimes find it a little upsetting looking at old photos for what might be an unusual reason. I want to warn the people in them about stuff. For example when I got to the photo taken in Cambodia all I could think was "the poor bastards alive then had no idea the nightmare that was waiting for them and their children" meaning what happened under Khmer Rouge.

The annoying one way nature of time bothers me. lol. think I might be going crazy.

Part of what makes the pictures so striking is that I constantly have to remind myself these are not modern men and women in costume.

Those were the days when the sun never set on the British Empire.

Wonderful pictures. It's so different in color.

What I'm wondering is what was Obama doing in Spain as a young boy? http://citynoise.org/upload/42155.jpg

Getting tan?

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