In Living Color
One of the awful tragedies of history is that it's always in the past. I'm not being glib. Once it's gone, it's gone.
The Library of Congress has a remarkable exhibition now of color photographs taken in the World War II era of life in the United States. Go look. Here's the main page. It is a time we usually see in black and white, and no matter how good it looks, it is still black and white and therefore just a little too alien for us to perfectly connect with. I guarantee you that at least one of these images will change that.
I fear death and I loathe the perpetual lostness of the past. Sometimes it is a small miracle to through some means - a diary, a photo, a painting - to connect with another person, another time, that is perfectly comprehensible for being human, but enticingly alien as well.
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Thanks for this, Johno. My
Thanks for this, Johno. My wife and I often have this same conversation -- how, because of how that part of the culture has come to us, we think of the past in black-and-white, so to see it in color makes it almost hyper-real. I'm looking forward to seeing this exhibition.