Today I came across this photo essay about America in Color from 1939 to 1943. It's a collection of color photographs from an era that was largely shot in black & white.
As a photographer, I love these images, of course. But I'm even more intrigued by the things I think about while looking at them, including:
- the style of dress & shoes
- the architecture
- the cars, the furniture, etc.
- the interactions of people
- the signage & symbols
- the landscape and its cultivation
- the acknowledgment of time (i.e, some photos are of uncertain date)
And I think to myself, I never would have thought this way had I not studied Classics. Classics teaches you to think about history in new ways: as a living process, as something that is recorded and the ways in which we document it: through photographs, through material culture, through language. Through words and images.
I find it hard to believe anyone can find little value in Classics when it teaches one to learn to think like this - and to think like this about a subject that isn't even related to what I study.
