December 1942. A winter afternoon in the North Proviso yardmaster’s office, Chicago & North Western Railroad. 4×5 Kodachrome transparency by Jack Delano.

Beautiful photos. Where are you obtaining these?

A lot of WPA and other photos have been put at the Library of Congress. Because they have no copyright and are available on the web a lot have turned up on other sites, even for sale. Here is the source.

http://www.loc.gov/pictures

I searched proviso and came up with six pages.

http://www.loc.gov/pictures/search/?va= ... lse&op=AND
If you find a nice big Kodachrome scan you can really get lost in the full size image.

I've looked around for other images like this, this one I have seen before, its just an absolute classic shot the way it was. I gotta find me them phones. I found an electric clock based on the one you see in that shot. Those little ringer phones I recall boxes like that out on the railroad with those, crank the spinner to ring the dispatcher, phone was inline common to all the other phones on the line no dialing.

What's the story behind the "Serve In Silence" poster on the back wall?

I'm sorry - I have to call foul here.

Look at the source of light. It appears to be high in the room. I am guessing it is coming from what looks like a flashlight/flashpot on the top of the stove. The two hanging lamps over the work area don't even seem to be turned on.

Even if the source is "natural", i.e. sunset coming through the window, the outdoor window appears to view a wintery grey scene.

This photo was not taken in 1942.

Sorry to disillusion you, but that Kodachrome scan is straight from the Library of Congress, credited to Jack Delano, and dated appropriately. Have a nice day.

Sorry to disillusion YOU, but even the august Library of Congress is hardly sacrosanct when it comes to caption data. When I was doing hands-on photo research of Washington street scenes and landmarks in 1999, I came upon many photos--an average of two or three a day, as I recall--with plainly erroneous caption data, such as a misidentified building, date (a PCC car in 1928? I don't think so!), etc. Fortunately, LoC Prints & Photo staff will at least acknowledge fallibility, especially in hand-written back-of-the-photo "information," and would listen to well-reasoned correction suggestions backed by accessible data ("see? the first PCC wasn't built until 1936, and these books show THAT car wasn't built until 1940, so..."). The errors are sometimes even made by the original photographers or subsequent collectors, so the LoC can hardly be blamed for this.

You know the famous "is that Lincoln standing there?" Civil War-era photo of Hanover Junction, Pa? It sat for decades in the files with "Hanover Junction, Va." on the back, and was only properly identified by a rail historian ca. 1953. http://www.hanoverjunction.net/pages/3b16077u_tif.htm

That being said, I have no reason to dispute the LoC identification of the Delano Kodachrome photos.

In this case, the Photographer is known.

The Photograph is part of a well documented large collection.

Is it staged? Yes.

Was additional lighting used? Yes.

4 x 5 Kodachrome in 1942 was ASA 10.

Guessing a 4 x 5 Graphic with a f 4.5 lens on a tripod with flashbulbs.

It is of a style called "National Geographic"

-Hudson

The lighting setup in this photo looks no more complicated than the illustrations in my copy of Graflex Graphic Photography. A simple setup with a cord and a flashbulb on top of the stove could have directed enought light to "paint" the photograph.

Just because it is staged and flash illumination is used, does not mean the photo is from 1942. Flashbulbs were avaiable then, and so were large format cameras with eithre focal plane or in-lens shutters synched for flash firing.

This is exactly why I stuck with Kodachrome to the end. Hopefully my images will still be usable long after I'm gone.