I selected the Inventory of 1940 New York World’s Fair Album, 1940 collection for this week’s blog post. The topic interested me because I knew that the New York World’s Fair was one of the biggest exhibits in the world, where many countries showcased their ideas and projects for the future. This album contains 23 “hand-colored photographs by an unidentified amateur photographer documenting a stay in New York City in 1940.” The abstract immediately drew me in because the description made the experience of looking at the collection reminiscent of looking at a stranger’s photo album from his/her vacation. It had a nostalgic feel to it, and makes me curious as to what the photographer felt compelled to document during his/her stay.
Based on the materials in this collection, which are photographs, we dive into historical narratives about how it was like to be a visitor at the 1940 New York World’s Fair. The photographs capture images of buildings and installations, such as the Ford Building and General Motors Building, as well as other places in Manhattan like the iconic Brooklyn Bridge and Riverside Church. The narrative seems more like a personal one, rather than one that is solely informational, because the collection of 23 images are taken from not just the fair, but from the city with a personal camera and kept in a string-bound album.
The collection may fail to tell an expansive narrative because it is just one person’s compilation of images that he/she chose to document and his/her handwritten captions for each. We fail to see other people’s perspectives that may give us more insight about the 1940s New York World’s Fair. For example, we miss narratives from participants who actually contributed to the fair, those who judged or reported on buildings/installations, or the stakeholders who deemed what was important and not important at the fair. Although the photographer’s documentations do not give us a ton of information or show us a diverse narrative, the images do at least give us some valuable insight on one person’s perspective of being in New York City at an exciting historical event.
In order to have a greater understanding of the 1940 New York World’s Fair, some sources that may be useful include:
- Newspaper articles about buildings/exhibitions/installations
- Interviews from participants/architects
- Blueprints or descriptions of the exhibitions
- Accounts from people from different countries who attended the fair
- Photos from different zones of the fair (ex. Transportation Zone, Communications and Business Systems Zone, Food Zone, etc.)
- Photos of printed material that were distributed about and to advertise the fair.
While the photographer’s collection still has cultural and historical value, it is important to recognize that the collection is biased to what he/she chose to document and not to document during his/her stay.
You did a great job picking apart this photography archive about the New York’s World Fair in 1940. I particularly like how you went into detail about what is missing within this archive and the diverse narratives that could come from the missing information. I certainly agree that there’s a sense of nostalgia when looking through the archival collection.
I love the way you capture the affective (emotional) component of this collection. Your blog post made me think about how, when we’re talking about telling stories from artifacts, we often focus on their explicit content, like facts and dates and who’s pictured. But archives often have an emotional valence, too, which can tell you a lot about the phenomenon, even if that’s a little harder to put into words.