Philadelphia Stories: A Photographic History, 1920-1960

by Fredric M. Miller, Allen F. Davis, Morris J. Vogel

Philadelphia Stories is a kind of family album. As in their earlier volume, Still Philadelphia: A Photographic History, 1890-1940, Miller, Vogel, and Davis have collected photographs of ordinary lives and daily events from 1920 to 1960 that have shaped the collective memory of people in the Philadelphia area. Through a series of photo essays, Philadelphia Stories evokes the mood of an era that embraced the Great Depression, World War II, the Cold War, and the complacent prosperity of the 1950s. Contemporary photos document physical changes in the metropolitan area: the developing skyline, the streets of rowhouses, the expanding suburbs. Details on homelife, food prices, school activities, local politics, shopping, social mores, and neighborhood customs chronicle experiences that are in many ways distinct to Philadelphians but also indicative of dramatic social, political, and economic shifts in the United States over forty years.

Using photojournalism as the dominant style of documentary photography - and consciousness making - the book also features three prototypical family albums. These collections of snapshots taken by local residents to record weddings, holidays, and other family events not only depict how people saw themselves at various times but reveal the kinds of memories they wanted to keep. While major national events create the context of this social history, the book focuses on the daily lives of Philadelphians: as they cope with the Depression, participate in New Deal programs, buy automobiles and television sets, grow Victory Gardens, hold air raid drills, visit the Freedom Train, move to the suburbs, cling to old neighborhoods, and maintain tradition amid flux.

Philadelphia Stories celebrates the recent past in the words and images of those who experienced it. It is a family album for all who know and love the city.

Genres: History

305 pages, Hardcover

First published October 8, 1988

Reviews

[Carl]

Social history of Philly 1920-60 through photographs. Not much of the suburbs (but I didn't expect much, given the title) although a nice photo of boys playing ball in a Wayne yard in 1926 and one from the 1958 Radnor-LM game. Good job focusing on working people, de facto segregation, and a few other key topics. The photo of the German-American Bund waving Nazi flags in the mid-'30s was the most memorable.