Life Magazine photo collection celebrates New York's Golden Age

✯ Day 70 of Vintage 365 ✯

 

 

Journalist Meyer Berger once said "Each man reads his own meaning into New York", and indeed whether you've ever set foot in the city that never sleeps or not, there is a sway and an unmistakable power to New York that makes it standout in a way few cities could ever dream of matching.

It's sometimes asserted that New York's heyday took place during the decades of the 1930s, 40s and 50s, and honestly I'm not one to argue with this viewpoint.

Of course the Big Apple shone and suffered, survived and succeeded for many years prior (and for many since), yet there was something almost mystically wonderful about New York during the mid-twentieth century.

If like good ol' Frankie, you're a fan of "New York, New York", than this fascinating Life Magazine collection of 45 different images taken around the city during the 1940s (including the heartwarming photo above of sailor and his gal enjoying a boat ride around Central Park) is sure to capture your imagination.

Comprised of a diverse mix of both black and white and colour everyday life/street scene photos, images of celebrities (spanning the spectrum from FDR to Gene Kelly), and a few shots (such as Alfred Eisenstaed's incredibly famous "V–J Day in Times Square") that have become permanently ingrained in our minds as symbols of both the decade and New York itself.

Beautiful, timeless, insightful and engaging, this wonderful vintage photo slide show is ripe with as many meanings as there were inhabitants of New York during the wild, wonderful, vastly interesting decade that was the 1940s.

Vintage 365: Wonderful slice-of-life photo compilation of 1940s New York

✯ Day 18 of Vintage 365 ✯

{This lively black and white image of Times Square in New York City on a rain soaked day was captured in 1940, and is similar to many of the photos in the Youtube clip featured in this morning’s post. Vintage photo from straatis on Flick.}

 

There is something almost intrinsically alluring - one might say downright magical - about New York City. Even if you've never stepped foot in the Big Apple yourself, you can't help feel as though on some level you know it intimately. It's woven into our collective conscious through the plethora of movies, television shows, iconic landmarks, and excellent photos about, and from, the city that never sleeps.

Today's post pays homage to NYC with a collection of deeply lovely vintage photos from the early 1940s. These beautiful and engaging shots were compiled into a video clip by Youtube user JDProducts5, and feature photos of New York that come via the vast collection of images held by the Library of Congress. Though embedding of this video has been disabled (thus I wasn't able to include the video itself directly in this post), you can watch it here.

In this four minute compilation we get to glance at the familiar landscape that we’ve all come to know so well - yet in a way it's different, no less busy but somehow simpler, more earnest, warmer and inviting perhaps. From iconic landmarks to fleeting street scenes this collection offers up a heart-warming, fascinating look back at New York as it (and the US as a whole) teetered on the edge of brink of entering WW2.

If like me, you discovered yourself lost is a yesteryear daydream by the end of this clip, you'll find that watching it but once is not enough, and that before you know if you'll have bookmarked this excellent vintage photo filled clip for future viewing, when that siren's call to see NYC in the flesh (that nearly all of are beckoned by at some point) takes hold of your heart and mind.