Photos of American Children in the 1940s

[Vampyre Master]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ess-color-photos-American-children-1940s.html

VM

 

[Gin&Tonics]

Wow! Thanks for sharing that VM. The images were so captivating I couldn't stop looking until I'd seen every one. What a fascinating window into the past!

 

[LizzieMaine]

Great photos, but some of the captions are a bit condescending. A kid standing in front of an old board fence might say "the desolation of rural America in the 1940's" to the Daily Mail, but I can walk into my back yard and see the exact same scene right now in 2012.

 

[The Wiser Hatter]

I have seen many of these before allways good to see them again.
Good space filler I call these as the images are easy to find on Flickr.

 

[Gingerella72]

Some of these I'd seen many times but a few were new to me. Thanks for posting!

 

[DamianM]

Real cool and early Kodachrome makes it so much better
makes me want to buy some feedsack fabric and make my shirt out of that

 

[Fletch]

Great photos, but some of the captions are a bit condescending. A kid standing in front of an old board fence might say "the desolation of rural America in the 1940's" to the Daily Mail, but I can walk into my back yard and see the exact same scene right now in 2012.

My grandpa used to tell me about living in the county seat town of Boone, IA, in the late '20s and early '30s. He would page thru pictures of neatly groomed frame houses and tidy 2-story brick downtown blocks and say, "I can't believe how junky everything looked" compared to his concrete-block tract-house neighborhood in Florida. He was a bitter man.

 

[Miss Sis]

Great photos, but some of the captions are a bit condescending. A kid standing in front of an old board fence might say "the desolation of rural America in the 1940's" to the Daily Mail, but I can walk into my back yard and see the exact same scene right now in 2012.

Lizzie, the Daily Mail is possibly the *most* condescending middle class paper in the UK. Their captions here are nothing compared to the tripe they print in the actual paper!

 

[Grizzly Adams]

"Desolate" Pie Town, New Mexico has not changed much. Still a good place to stop for a piece of homemade pie, however.

 

[BigFitz]

Thanks VM for the link, I enjoyed looking at each photo. I did get some kind of negative vibe out of some of the captions though such as the comment about the five girls wearing the same dress (actually two different patterns, not one) that were "no doubt homemade" as if thats a bad thing. And the crude "model" airplane that was obviously made by the child holding it signifies some ingenuity and resourcefulness to me.

 

[sheeplady]

All those children look relatively well fed and clothed to me, although those outfits are likely their very best. The houses they show are worn, but not dilapidated. Some of the kids are dirty, but kids get dirty all the time. None of those pictures are any different (if you updated the clothes) than pictures that would be taken where I grew up- maybe the houses are better kept in these photos. Those photos are no different than my family photos from the same time.

If the caption writers think those houses and outfits are bad, I've got a couple neighborhoods and a couple rural areas I can drop them off in. Then they can do an expose on that.