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Showing posts from April 16, 2010

The Charles W Cushman Collection of the Indiana University Archives

558 DeKoven St, Chicago IL (ca.1949) I bumped into this collection of 1,241 color slide photo's from Chicago via a similar collection of Charles W Cushman's intriguing period snapshots of New York, ca.1940-1960. His work was all meticulously documented shooting journals that were acquired along with his equipment and collection by the Indiana University Archives. In his journals Cushman gives dates and locations down to the cross streets, and in some instances even the house number has been included. However over the years entire streets have vanished from Chicago in the name of blight prevention or progress, we've gained highways and exuberant but lonely fields of parking but have sadly broken the the long straight line of history between Cushman's journals and our experience. But the photographs are still here, preserved in uneasy colors. The photograph was taken in 1949 it's subject was likely 558 DeKoven St, the building on the left. The backyard