Oldsmobile in Pictures
Oldsmobile Promotional Photo, 1934
Oldsmobile in Color
This idealistic California scene promises a lifestyle of ease and luxury with your 1934 Oldsmobile F-series Six. Oldsmobile thrived during the Great Depression and touted their cars as the leaders in style and value.
This image is from a rare Agfacolor glass screen plate in the Leavenworth historical photograph collection. Agfacolor produced one of the earlier types of color photographic plates. It was similar to the Autochrome process in which the glass plate overlays a mosaic of red, green and blue dyed resin grains. These grains act as tiny color filters that interpret color onto the emulsion.
R.C. Leavenworth: The Man and His Photos
R.C. Leavenworth Letterhead
The striking image above comes from the Leavenworth Photograph Collection. Leavenworth Photography of Lansing, Michigan created one of the largest collections of Oldsmobile photographs. The collection is permanently housed at the Archives of Michigan.
The R.C. Leavenworth Photograph Collection spans many years. Through Leavenworth’s photos, one can “travel” from the horse-and-carriage days to the age of the automobile!
R. C. Leavenworth started out photographing lumbering and mining camps in northern Michigan, using a horse-drawn darkroom. He relocated to Lansing, Michigan in 1919 to document Lansing’s transformation into a major industrial city and automotive capital. For over a century, Leavenworth Photography has shot hundreds of thousands of images that tell the story of industry, business and social life in Michigan’s capital city. With subjects as diverse as street scenes, car parts, workers’ strikes, vaudeville troupes and football games, Leavenworth lived up to the slogan plastered on the door of his company car : “Anything photographed, anywhere, anytime.”
One of the best known agencies from the Great Depression was the WPA, or Works Progress Administration (”Work Projects Administration” after 1939). The reach of the WPA projects is legendary–from bridges to stream improvements to roads to arts, crafts and writing projects. The WPA even thought about holiday planning.
