Can you date this picture…? (4): answer

Thank you for posting such great responses.

In particular, thank you to Phil Beard, Joel and Erik, who very precisely identified the picture and its date. I appreciate your patience.

Your comments were divided almost equally between those who thought this was a photograph of models, taken recently, and those who thought it was a genuine picture from the 1930s / 1940s.

Highlight the space below to find out what Phil, Joel and Erik already knew:

September 1939, in Minneapolis, Minn. The picture was featured recently on the historic photo blog Shorpy, and Phil Beard explains why it looks uncannily like a model:

“It’s an FSA photo by John Vachon. He had a passion for leaning out of high windows in search of that Constructivist angle on the world.”

and as Ashley pointed out:

“The camera has a “tilt” lens, which can do strange things with the focus plane. Tilting camera lenses were much more common prior to the 1950’s.

…..
Thank you very much to Shorpy.

3 comments to Can you date this picture…? (4): answer

  • Llywarch

    Doh! I’m regular [at] http://www.shorpy.com/ and I had a nagging feeling I’d seen the photo before.

    Looking forward to the next ‘Can you date….’!!

  • jufjo

    Ah yes that makes sense.
    The Wheeler truck looked too modern for me to be 1930s but of course I was looking at it with European eyes.
    It often happens that pre war American photos look more modern then pre war European photos.

  • Chris Samuel

    Cool, very happy to be wrong on that one, excellent photo!

Leave a Reply

 

 

 

You can use these HTML tags

<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

Spam Protection by WP-SpamFree