posted
Very cool. I remember when someone linked to a site--here's how long ago this was: I think it was the same site, but I'm not certain, and I think it might possibly even have been me, but I'm not sure--showing color photographs of World War I. I can't begin to express how fascinated I was.
I think our generation's fascination with the last hundred years or so is a special case, in that this is the period that was first documented in photographs. Photographs, unlike paintings or written journals, capture reality in a more visceral way. I can look into people's eyes and know that I'm not seeing how the artist rendered them, I'm seeing how they really looked. I can just identify so much more with whatever I see in photographs. I think our great grandchildren are as likely to be fascinated by the turn of the twentieth century as by the turn of the twenty-first, for this reason. It will still be the earliest time period where they can see the actual artifacts of the period, in actual use, and look into the eyes of people who lived it, in their youth.
Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
