mcintoshcounty

Title: Buffalo Gals

Now, this is a 'square dance'! The four couple you can see [including the hand] are in a circle, doing a 'grand right and left', where the men go in one direction around the 'square' of four couples and the women the other, given each other alternatively their right and left hand as they pass in the opposite direction [see the arm and hand directly at the back of the photo]. This is probably as the dancers have been around the circle and met their partners, where they would 'swing'.

Definitely before McDonald's.

this is awesome. they all look rather drear and unhappy though

People were very poor. Food was in short supply. You don't get fat on poke salad, corn pone and pinto beans.

All you need - a fiddle and guitar. In NH, a small, 3-4 piece band which played for square dances might be called an orchestra.

I painted this girl: www.flickr.com/photos/christinestephens/4298770440/

I thought I would try to bring back some of the colour. This one is faded, and has shifted to purple, and I have a feeling that the film stock used was not great, or in some way unstable, but I've done what I can. As to film stock, for some reason, this data is not included in LOC's records for any of its colour images from this period, which is too bad, because it can be crucial to restoration efforts. www.flickr.com/photos/theonemacduff/5547531094/in/album-7...

Duffy'sTavern, most of the FSA/OWI slides are Kodachrome. They are stored off-site in cold storage so it's not easy to quickly check each one.

Jon (LOC P&P) Yup, I figured that was the case, based on work I've done on others, but it's nice to have confirmation. But this one was so badly faded, shifted so much towards purple, that my thought was that somehow the flash being used was not a good balance for Kodachrome, that the faux colour was baked into the slide from the moment the shutter was tripped. Unfortunately, I don't know enough about early flash bulbs or the 1930s chemistry of Kodachrome to figure it out. BTW, while the slides were scanned at 3600dpi, by the time you crop away the slide mount area, you're down to 3000-3100dpi, and personally, I would say that a 35mm slide shot through good glass – as these were – should be scanned at a minimum of 4800dpi. This is about enough so that you can begin to make out grain in the image. The larger file size also allows you greater freedom to sharpen, if you want to, and gives smoother colour transitions, and better shadow detail. Jest sayin'.

Square dance?!? Looks more like Balboa (wikipedia.org):

"Balboa is a form of swing dance that started as early as 1915 and gained in popularity in the 1930s and 1940s. It is danced primarily in close embrace, and is led with a full body connection... The dancers stand close, touching from hip to upper chest... The man's right front torso (rib cage) touches the woman's center front torso (rib cage)."

That's not how I learned to square dance! I would have to agree with WaiferX on this one.

Could be balboa, or another early dance like the Peabody. Given the year given (and the clothing seems to agree), I'd have to say balboa or a derivative. A square dance is sometimes a "called" dance, so it could be truly a square dance where they called a move that just happens to look like balboa. Lots of possibilities.

Could be at what folks called a 'square dance', where there were some 'called' square dances [Honolulu Baby, Just Because, Red River Gal, etc.] and also quite a few waltzes, foxtrots, polkas, interspersed.

great pic!