Photos: Then and now Lancaster places and faces

 

More than 70 years ago American photojournalist Marjory Collins documented everyday life of people and places during World War II.

 

As part of a famous team of photographers for the U.S. Office of War Information, her assignment was to capture “pictures of life as it is” in cities and small town communities on the home front.

 

Then and Now photos is an ongoing series from Keystone Crossroads that looks at historical images of the past and photographs of today from Pennsylvania cities and towns.

More than 70 years ago American photojournalist Marjory Collins documented everyday life of people and places during World War II.

As part of a famous team of photographers for the U.S. Office of War Information, her assignment was to capture “pictures of life as it is” in cities and small town communities on the home front.

Among places like New York, Baltimore, Pittsburgh and Washington D.C., one of her assignments was Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

In Lancaster, Collins made iconic photographs of the vendors at Central Market. She documented the city’s Armistice Day parade and a dance for employees at the Hamilton Watch Company. She took shots of the community garbage heap and shots of a highway supervisor salmon fishing with a bottle of hard cider on the Susquehanna River. The list goes on and on.

Collins didn’t stop with Lancaster City, she ventured to Lititz, Manheim, Carlisle, and Pitcairn, capturing small town America.  The photographs range from rural barns filled with tobacco drying to portraits of woman laboring on Pennsylvania Railroad yards. 

Her treasure trove of “pictures of life as it is” includes more than 3,000 photographs in the Library of Congress.