Framed or unframed, desk size to sofa size, printed by us in Arizona and Alabama since 2007. Explore now.
Shorpy is funded by you. Patreon contributors get an ad-free experience.
Learn more.
June 1942. "Construction at Douglas Dam, Tennessee Valley Authority." 4x5 Kodachrome transparency by Alfred Palmer for the OWI. View full size.
Can anyone identify this dam? This photo is one of a trio purchased in northern California. I get dizzy just looking at the staircases clinging to the side of the cliff on the right. View full size.
June 1942. "Eight units in generator hall of a new addition to TVA's hydroelectric plant at Wilson Dam, Sheffield vicinity, Alabama." Much, if not most, of the energy from the huge Tennessee Valley Authority hydroelectric projects undertaken during the war was used to run the uranium enrichment plants at the government's secret atom-bomb facility in Oak Ridge. View full size. 4x5 Kodachrome transparency by Alfred Palmer for the Office of War Information.
June 1942. Crane operator at Tennessee Valley Authority's Douglas Dam. 4x5 Kodachrome transparency by Alfred Palmer for the OWI. View full size.
January 1941. "Near the waterfront. New Bedford, Massachusetts." 35mm Kodachrome transparency by Jack Delano for the OWI. View full size.
June 1942. "Kenneth C. Hall with his wife, Helen Louise, and daughter Peggy. Mr. Hall is a foreman in the hot rolling mill at the Reynolds Metals Company, an aluminum plant using Tennessee Valley Authority electricity. He lives in this TVA defense house at Sheffield, Alabama." View full size. Medium format negative by Arthur Rothstein for the Office of War Information.
June 1942. "Installation of a third 30,000 kilowatt generator at the Tennessee Valley Authority's Cherokee Dam on the Holston River." View full size. Medium format safety negative by Arthur Rothstein for the Office of War Information.
November 1941. "Slag runoff from one of the open-hearth furnaces at Republic Steel in Youngstown, Ohio. Slag is drawn off the furnace just before the molten steel is poured into ladles for ingotting." View full size. 4x5 Kodachrome transparency by Alfred Palmer for the Office of War Information.
October 1942. Employees at the Mid-Continent oil refinery in Tulsa, Oklahoma. 4x5 Kodachrome transparency by John Vachon. View full size.
July 1938. Veteran steelworkers in Aliquippa, Pennsylvania. View full size. 35mm nitrate negative by Arthur Rothstein for the Farm Security Administration.
In what we hope will be an annual tradition, we're pleased to open the season on the Shorpy/Plan59 Holiday Print, made at Juniper Gallery in Fairfax, Virginia, from an original 1938 painting by noted Fortune magazine illustrator Antonio Petruccelli that we purchased at auction last fall in New York. The prints, struck on French art paper with archival inks, are very detailed and quite beautiful.
View full size | View even larger. For more information click here.
1941. Building liberty ships in an abandoned freight car factory near the Atlantic coast. Freighter sections for the merchant fleet are being prefabricated at the rate of one ship a week. View full size. Photograph by Howard Liberman.
June 1942. Tightening a nut on a guide vane servomotor in the Tennessee Valley Authority hydroelectric plant at the Watts Bar Dam. View full size. 4x5 Kodachrome transparency by Alfred Palmer, Office of War Information.
November 1941. Iron ore piles and blast furnaces of the Carnegie-Illinois steel mill in Etna, Pennsylvania. View full size. 4x5 Kodachrome transparency by Alfred Palmer for the Office of War Information.
June 1943. Workers leaving the Pennsylvania shipyards at Beaumont, Texas. View full size. 4x5 Kodachrome transparency by John Vachon.