Digging into Durham: The Great Depression through new eyes

At Duke's Center for Documentary Studies was an exhibit entitled "Full Color Depression" for most of the month of January. The photos of the Great Depression tell a tale that few could describe rhetorically. The desolation, the fear, and the uncertainty of the era could be summed up almost magically by a single photo.

For example, one photo, Migrant Mother, represented the trials and tribulations of a whole group of people who were forced to find new homes during the Depression.

Pictures did what no Depression-era author could successful do—they told the whole story. Now, more Depression – era pictures have been found, and Curator Bruce Jackson has placed them on display at the Duke Center of Documentary Studies-Lyndhurst House. These pictures, however, have a special quality. They are in full color.

Unlike most photos, taken during the Depression era, these photos were taken using kodachrome, which took longer to develop than black-and-white film. Because the kodachrome photos needed more time to develop, they could not replace the black-and-white film and quickly became obsolete.

The photos, however, have gained more meaning; the color photos of Bruce Jackson animate the Depression, and allow every color to tell its own part of the Great Depression.

Whether it is a stack of wheat, sitting in a “CO-OP” silo, or rural Texas school children outside of a schoolhouse, every photo adds something to the narrative of the Depression, and rejuvenates the past in our minds.

The “Full Color Depression” will be at the Center of Documentary Studies-Lyndhurst Home until June 21, 2012. The Center is located off of Powe Street, across the street from Southgate Residence Hall.