Found Photos Friday: Europe in the mid 1950s -- Amsterdam

Back in January I picked up a box full of slides for $1 at an estate sale. The box had about 300 slides from Europe between 1952 and 1958. These appear to be vacation slides as they take in a lot of major tourist locations. Instead of simply posting all 300 photos at once, I'm going to spread these photos out over some number of weeks. Though I shared a photos of Notre Dame on Monday, we'll look at Amsterdam photos this week. About one third of the photos were taken in France, so there will be plenty of time to look at those images.

Each of these Amsterdam photos is from the World's Fair in Brussels in 1958 -- Expo 58. Notably, this as the first major world's far after World War II and lasted six months (from April to October.) Major world's fairs can last up to six months with minor world's fairs lasting less time. The world's fair committee has a tier system for what type of fair will be held and how long it can go on for. The major world's fairs are spaced some number of years apart.

Expo 58 took three years to build with a 15,000-person labor force. Expo 58 was the fifth in a series of world's fairs spanning 70 years in Brussels. It was also the last as Brussels has not hosted a fair since Expo 58.


Atomium at night. I think this is my favorite photo from the whole box. Atomium represents an iron crystal. Each sphere is an iron atom.


In addition to his photos, the photographer bought a number of slides at the fair. The monochrome slides below were all purchased. I suspect that, to cut costs, the sellers used weak chemicals or cut corners as none of the purchased photos' color could be saved. At it was, saving the color on the images that I could often took a LOT of work in Photoshop.