I came across Christian Montone's flicker photo stream this morning and have probably spent two hours looking at all the amazing vintage ads, movie posters, record covers, postcards and travel pictures he has posted. There are literally thousands of pictures, luckily he has them categorized. So I skipped past the majority of stuff and got right to the food ads from the 1940’s and forward. I have always been drawn to illustrations from that era, they are so representative of the ideal American life. This idea though was false, that era was very much a mess and pretty much everything you can think of that defined this time period was used to distract people from the reality of how messy post war life was in America, not least of which the state of agriculture and rising food costs. During the world wars, when sugar and processed flours were rationed, rates of western diseases were way down. But rolling through the 1950’s and 60’s when food prices were soaring and the government started allowing for synthetic foods to be made and not labeled clearly, people started to get really sick.
At any rate, below are a few ad’s that I especially liked. And one by Monsanto that just blows my mind (and not in a good way).
.(1970's Monsanto Ad)
OMG monsanto!
ReplyDelete