Our collective memory is shaped by interpretations and representations of the past. Through repetition and recall, images are embedded in our sense of self -- conditions of knowing -- our individual and national identities. For decades, the depression depicted in the images of the 1930s were always black & white.
The austere and evidential nature of the work of photographers such as Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Arthur Rothstein constitutes a great portion of our collective visual memory of these times.
Now we have another, more colorful, reality to consider.
The Library of Congress has recently finished its Online Exhibition "Bound for Glory: America in Color." This is the first major exhibition of the little known color images taken by photographers of the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information.
"Bound for Glory" evokes a new found visual encounter with the past and is some sense challenges our ability to visualize this period in our history in anything
other than black & white.
History is constrained by the technologies used to record it. The
inability to see the past in color, as we are now can do, limits our emotional and intellectual capacities to respond. Our
capacities to register all of the subtle nuances that come from the wide range
of hues and values is subordinated by the limited tonality of black & white.
The documentary work of the U.S. government's photographic projects during the 1930s and 1940s functioned an as exercise in democratic civics. We remember these difficult years through what we are show and what we understand about the things we are shown.
Recently, the Library of Congress has completed its 1 millionth digital scan of its photographic collection for public use. One million digital images, many coming from the depression era and the war efforts in the 1940s.
More than 170,000 black-and-white images and 1,600 color images are available now online as of the end of November. This is a remarkable accomplishment and not only helps to protect the collection but also makes our history more accessible to the general public, students and researchers.
Jack Delano's image of Mike Evans, a welder, at the rip tracks at Proviso yard of the Chicago and Northwest Railway Company
Marion Post Wolcott's African American migratory workers by a "juke joint" Belle Glade, Florida, February 1941
John Vachon's African American boy Cincinnati, Ohio, 1942 or 1943.