Flashback: 1933 World's Fair
1933 WORLD'S FAIR | Chicago History Museum is giving new life online to photographer's images of Century of Progress
Ken Hedrich peered through his camera 75 years ago and captured the images of his age.
Now, those photographs of the Century of Progress Exposition -- the World's Fair that opened on Chicago's lakefront in 1933 -- are being readied for a new life on the Internet. More than 200 photos have been scanned and digitalized in preparation for posting later this year by the Chicago History Museum.
(Chicago History Museum)
PHOTO GALLERY
Chicago World's Fair
Though the images are decades old, "they look so fresh and sharp," museum technician Nicole Tevo says, thanks to preservation done by the firm the photographer helped found, Chicago-based Hedrich Blessing.
Also, the negatives, some of them on highly flammable nitrate, are a relatively enormous eight inches by 10 inches. Such size allows crystal-clear shots of the fair -- a clarity that has turned up some surprises, like a person's shadow in the roofline of the fair's Ford Building. "It's a treat to find those things,'' said Tevo.
The fair itself, which opened May 27, 1933, was a treat for a Depression-weary Chicago. Encompassing the area roughly between the Shedd Aquarium and where McCormick Place now squats, with Northerly Island as the focus, the fair ran for two seasons, in 1933 and 1934. Attracting 48 million visitors (at 50 cents admission), it was staged to mark Chicago's centennial and the scientific and technological advancements America had made over the previous 100 years.
The aim, as one official said at the time, was to "educate you so painlessly you will not realize you're being educated.''
A 400,000-square-foot Hall of Science featured a miniature oil refinery and a 10-foot-tall robot that explained digestion. America's titans of industry boasted of their global might: the General Motors building, one of about two dozen corporate-sponsored structures, included a Chevrolet assembly line. One could watch an International Harvester-built radio-controlled tractor or tires being made in the Firestone Building.
For fun, a Skyride transported people across the Burnham Harbor lagoon, visitors could eyeball a girl "sacrificed" in a flaming crater in a Hawaiian Village or be titillated (or appalled) by fan dancer Sally Rand's nudie show.
But the fair's sleek and futuristic Art Deco architecture, often bathed in light at night, was a marvel in itself.
Hedrich, a 25-year-old Chicago native, was hired to record those stunning, angular structures. "Our only tools are light and shadow,'' Hedrich would tell his brother Bill, who assisted with the bulky tripod cameras of the time.
At the fair, "Ken would look at the sun . . . [and say,] 'Ah! This [building] is going to be shot at 10:30. Let's be on time, set it up for 10 o'clock, shoot at 10:30.' You pick up a Hedrich Blessing photograph -- you would never see a shot like that in the 1930s. Never,'' Bill Hedrich, who has since died, said in a 1994 interview.
One critic described the Hedrich Blessing style as "the difference between stenography and prose."
The museum hopes to have the photos -- part of 250,000 Hedrich Blessing pictures -- online by September.
"They're pretty amazing,'' said Tevo. "Technically, they're just right on."