Let's go for a drive...Billboards of 1932

[Fletch]

W.A. (Andy) Rigsby of St. Louis, Mo., was an accomplished artist of a kind mostly gone today - the commercial sign and scene painter. Family members have preserved quite a few examples of his work for the General Outdoor Advertising Company, in the form of these beautiful photographs - all taken in greater St. Louis circa 1932.

Here's a slideshow...pretend you've got the top down and go fantasy shopping for all the things you can't get now, and couldn't have afforded then.

 

[Talbot]

Thank you. Great stuff. Now to tune in to Bob Sylvester and his Mississippians...

 

[Gingerella72]

That was awesome! Thanks for posting it!

 

[Fletch]

Thank you. Great stuff. Now to tune in to Bob Sylvester and his Mississippians...

You may have to wait till the J.S. docks. Riverboats aren't wired for radio yet. But you might catch Bob on KMOX from the Meadowbrook Ballroom, over WIL at Sauter's Park, or the really plum gig in town, the Chase Hotel via KWK.

 

[The Wiser Hatter]

Great goup of Billboard's.

 

[lolly_loisides]

Thanks Fletch, great link.

 

[deco_droid]

So interesting! I love to see things like this that are fleeting, and rarely documented. I was struck by the images showing huge signs on the roofs of relatively small buildings.

 

[Fletch]

So interesting! I love to see things like this that are fleeting, and rarely documented.

You said a mouthful. If you go on vintage-photo sites like Shorpy, you will find that large-format vernacular photography - which gave an amazingly rich record of the first few decades of the 20th century - all but stopped during the Depression years.

Most of the really detailed images of the 1930s were taken by New Deal agencies like the Farm Security Administration, photographers backed by industry like Bourke-White, or socially conscious artists such as Berenice Abbott and John Gutmann.

As a result, the subject matter is narrowly drawn. All we have to form a mental picture of those years is images of big city and back country, the very great and the very humble. In between is mostly people in poses, be they home snaps or Hollywood glossies.

The photojournalist's move to 35mm cameras such as the Leica, which replaced many a glass-plate setup with cheap and portable movie film, only fueled the trend toward smaller, grittier pictures.

News photographers, of course, still used the large format (now in film cameras such as the Speed-Graphics). But precious little of their work survives - even the newspapers themselves.

 

[deco_droid]

Agreed, Shorpy is a great site. I have a penchant for the lovely girls of the 20s, so I always have to check in there for any "new" photos with female subject matter. Funny how some of the Shorpy commentators fall in love with those 100+ year old gals!