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[Dai101]

Mrs. Viola Sievers, one of the wipers at the roundhouse giving a giant "H" class locomotive a bath of live steam

Women workers employed as wipers in the roundhouse having lunch in their rest room, Chicago and Northwest Railway Company

Even women where badass then .....

 

[Guardian Bob]

Even women where badass then .....

Yep, any one of them could beat me up.

 

[Trent Strong]

Chicks have gotten so much hotter since then.

Evolution, baby.

These pictures are about 70 years old.

 

[JetBlackPanda]

Love these pictures!

this seems like the perfect place to pimp:

http://www.shorpy.com/

If you guys are interested in this kind of stuff I would recommend you take a look.

 

[crazy monkey]

Perhaps some of you already know that library of congress has a flickr stream of color pictures from 1930-40..

http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/sets/72157603671370361/

Also really old russian color photos from 1909-1912 by Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii

http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/

This looks almost 3D.. and it's almost hundred years old.. :-o

The Emir of Bukhara, Alim Khan (1880-1944), poses solemnly for his portrait, taken in 1911 shortly after his accession

Different photograph from different angle

 

[SolKane]

there were still hotties back in the day:

 

[ethic]

Yeah, a man who died prematurely due to all the vile shit he ingested, due to "unknown causes" like cancer. Awesome.

He didn't die prematurely. People nowadays live too long.

 

[GDGF]

there were still hotties back in the day:

Oh of course. Look at any pics of silent film starlets for example and you will see gorgeousness.

 

[Maklershed]

Very cool stuff OP. Thanks for the link.

 

[Dai101]

Oh of course. Look at any pics of silent film starlets for example and you will see gorgeousness.

Im a sucker for silent film girls, specially the gamine type:

 

[neoism]

The Emir of Bukhara, Alim Khan (1880-1944), poses solemnly for his portrait, taken in 1911 shortly after his accession

Woow 1911 looked pretty real back then

 

[neoism]

Ukraine, 2010

:O those eyes...... :O

 

[bill0527]

Chicks have gotten so much hotter since then.

Evolution, baby.

These people sacrificed their bodies to help build a country, where 70 years later, people could sit at a desk in their air conditioning and make fun of them.

 

[the_log_ride]

there were still hotties back in the day:

I spy an Adam's Apple.

 

[gdt]

These pictures are about 70 years old.

Evolution knew it made a huge mistake, and quickly got on top of it.

 

[santi_yo]

Ukraine, 2010

 

[Flying_Phoenix]

I've really noticed how the sexes are so seemingly to the gender roles. Males are very masculine, females are very feminine (with the exception of those rail workers).

Looking at those pics makes me realized how soft our society has become.

This is a MAN.

He looks like he's half lizard.

 

[J-Rod]

Very interesting. My grandmother passed a couple years ago and would've been 96 this month. She lived through the depression and could barely talk about it since it was so bad. My mom and her brothers and sisters say they have seen some of these things many times, like the African Americans hoeing cotton, the juke joints, and farmers hauling their crop to town with mules. Most of them didn't have shoes to wear in school either, and were dirty ragamuffins. There is a noticeable difference in the poverty level between the photos of the northern states, and the photos of Mississippi and Louisiana. You can still see some stuff pretty close to this in parts of the Mississippi delta.

 

[SolKane]

I spy an Adam's Apple.

it's called a larynx. everyone has one.

 

[ATF487]

1) Love the Chicago pictures, especially the railway and the PBR sign. It's amazing how many places have inferior train travel compared to older generations...

2) Parts of Connecticut and Massachusetts still look like that. Especially the Connecticut one on the sea, that could have been taken this year

 

[Javaman]

The clarity and sharpness between these types of cameras at the image sizes we're viewing are negligible. A large amount of the color pics in the link are actually taken with sheet film (ones with the grooves on the edges), which pulls in a huge amount of detail, the original scans are around 9000x7000 pixels, it's just that the op's source has the badly compressed and artifacted versions showing.

I don't care what kind of camera was used, there's going to be major fading of the pigments. That color intensity didn't come from the original, that's for sure.

 

[East Lake]

You're talking about the 1911 portrait right? I was only trying to say as far as detail goes the depression era stuff will be equally, if not more clear than that portrait. But yeah, there's definitely been some restoration work done on that thing.

 

[Chuckie]

I don't care what kind of camera was used, there's going to be major fading of the pigments. That color intensity didn't come from the original, that's for sure.

True, the original is not even a photograph (in the classic sense of the word) it are three glass plates.

I posted the way they 'reprinted'/restored it earlier in the thread.

Edit: This was it; http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/making.html

 

[Nerevar]

2) Parts of Connecticut and Massachusetts still look like that. Especially the Connecticut one on the sea, that could have been taken this year

I got that feeling too. My wife and I just did a weekend in Vermont where we stayed at a little inn and went to the local farms / farmers markets / cider makers / cheese makers / etc. It's amazing how they've managed to hold on to that kind of life.

Edit: and to everyone talking about how "ugly" the women were back then, have you ever seen a woman past her mid-20s without makeup? Those women are probably in their 40s and they've seen a lot more in life than you or I. That stuff shows. That's why women wear makeup.

 

[iidesuyo]

Yup this is it. My memory was hazy but jeez, amazing shit.

Taken in 1915 Russia. It's weird that color photography took so long to become standard, many people used b/w cameras well into the 1980s.

 

[Threi]

These people sacrificed their bodies to help build a country, where 70 years later, people could sit at a desk in their air conditioning and make fun of them.

qft

 

[ymmv]

Love these pictures!

this seems like the perfect place to pimp:

http://www.shorpy.com/

If you guys are interested in this kind of stuff I would recommend you take a look.

Shorpy is incredible.

 

[Patrick Bateman]

Yup this is it. My memory was hazy but jeez, amazing shit.

Wow, I just read that this is a self portrait of Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky, the guy who took the photo of the Emir and the one who was a pioneer at coloured photographs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Mikhailovich_Prokudin-Gorskii

He even took a picture of Leo Tolstoi:

A picture from 1910(!!).

 

[Ominym]

Taken in 1915 Russia. It's weird that color photography took so long to become standard, many people used b/w cameras well into the 1980s.

I'm sure it was the cost. Color photography didn't really become practical cost wise until then I'd assume.

 

[XMonkey]

It's kind of insane to think about how far we've come in 100 years. I can't really imagine what large cities will be like in the late 21st century with the way technology progresses exponentially faster.

 

[Reno7728]

Thought I'd bump this thread as the Big Picture Blog have just posted a collection of these old colour Russian photos

Some examples:

 

[Patrick Bateman]

Thought I'd bump this thread as the Big Picture Blog have just posted a collection of these old colour Russian photos

Some examples:

Disneyland?

 

[EYEL1NER]

These are just blowing my mind right now. I've seen surreal used a couple times in the thread and I suppose it is the perfect word for it. I've always loved black and white movies, history, things like that, but there has always been a disconnect without color. Black and white is really capable of driving home that something is old. But these are just...wow.
Pictures of people in Russia from a century ago? That died long ago? And they look to me like they could've been taken yesterday.

 

[The Elite]

These pictures are about 70 years old.

Evolution happens a lot faster than we think. OMG!

 

[Joel Was Right]

America is a beautiful country. George III really screwed up. I also notice how black people in the US even before the 50's were better clothed than many are in Africa nowdays. Kinda sad

 

[G-Bus]

Nice thread.

People don't look too happy back then.

 

[ymmv]

Nice thread.

People don't look too happy back then.

I'm not surprised. In those days people lost their souls when a photo was taken of 'em.