Our holdings include hundreds of glass and film negatives/transparencies that we've scanned ourselves; in addition, many other photos on this site were extracted from reference images (high-resolution tiffs) in the Library of Congress research archive. (To query the database click here.) They are adjusted, restored and reworked by your webmaster in accordance with his aesthetic sensibilities before being downsized and turned into the jpegs you see here. All of these images (including "derivative works") are protected by copyright laws of the United States and other jurisdictions and may not be sold, reproduced or otherwise used for commercial purposes without permission.
[REV 25-NOV-2014]
Vintage photos of:
October 1938. "Cajun girl at National Rice Festival. Crowley, Louisiana." 35mm negative by Russell Lee for the Farm Security Administration. View full size.
I love all the "helpful" advice from the trendy commenters of today. However, if they were suddenly plunked back into those old photos, they'd be the ones quite out of place, and themselves the recipients of all kinds of helpful advice on how out to become fashionable and trendy...for then.
Take-away point...if you see a "look" in a photo, that was pretty much what everyone wanted to look like at the time.
Someone needed to tell this pretty girl that you need to brush and style out, out the very obvious curler hair after you take out the curlers.
Does anyone else think the pretty girl in the middle looks like Scarlett Johansen?
[Or maybe Scarlett Johansson. - Dave]
The reason I clicked on the photo is the girl on the right could be my mother's sister. Mom was also 18 at the time, but in Massachusetts ... uncanny. Can't wait to show my sister.
The girl on the right looks so much like my grandmother it's spooky. She would have been 18 at the time. She and her family, however, are all from Virginia. I wonder if it's some distant cousin or something. I've heard it said that everyone has a double, and I believe I just found hers, or at least a photo of hers.
She looks so happy! I bet it was a great afternoon.
Today's Top 5