Female workers employed as wipers in the roundhouse having lunch in their break room, Chicago and Northwestern Railroad, Clinton, Iowa, April 1943. Source: FSA documentary color photos featured in New Deal Photography: USA 1935-1943 from Taschen.

When I think of the Great Depression I tend to think of photographs like “Migrant Mother” by Dorothea Lange and the movie “The Grapes of Wrath“. Lange’s photographs, and most of those by her colleagues photographing for the Farm Security Administration were shot in black and white so I tend to think of the Great Depression in black and white as was The Grapes of Wrath. It came as quite a revelation to me to come across these spectacular Depression era photographs in color. I guess I shouldn’t have been so surprised through. The Great Depression didn’t end until the late 1930s and Kodachrome came out in 1935 so it was likely that someone would have been shooting in color during that period.

They also reminded me that Kodachrome really was quite a remarkable film. It’s too bad that it’s now no longer available and even if it were couldn’t be processed.