JF Ptak Science Books: A Crowd of Smiles (1945)

WWI Photography Catalog

Google search

The Fine Print

The History of Ideas Blog by John Ptak is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at longstreet.typepad.com.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.thesciencebookstore.com.

« General Groves on The Possibility of Blowing Up the World and What Comes Next (1945) | Main | Social Life on the pre-Internet (1922) »

A Crowd of Smiles (1945)

JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post

I've written a number of posts on this blog on dense crowd imagery in photographs--parades, armies, union marches, protests, celebrations, work environments, and so on,not the least of which are the famous Weegee million-person-Coney-Island beach scenes. (All of these are findable via the Google search box at right.) Today's installment is the back cover of a small pamphlet called Your City, a Handbook for the Citizens of Liverpool, which is a short guide to the nuts-and-bolts of living there. The remarkable thing about the dense crowd photo is that so many of the people are smiling, which to my experience is not a common thing. Since this pamphlet was published in October 1945 my guess is that the crowd formed in celebration for the end of WWII in Europe or Japan, resulting in this photograph of 2,000 smiles.