In 1943, the Office of War Information sent the young photographer Esther Bubley on a six week bus tour of the United States to document how people were living in wartime. Many of her photos show soldiers on the move, sometimes filling entire waiting rooms. However, her favorite subject was ordinary people getting from one place to another. The picture above, captured in the Chicago Greyhound station, shows three women sharing souvenirs from their vacations.
The contrast in styles between young and old is on bold display. The young woman, perhaps in her late teens or early twenties, chose pants for her bus journey. This is yet more evidence that pants were moving out of sports arenas and factories to other public venues during the war. You can see that she has on somewhat high heels with her pants, something I thought was a more recent phenomenon.
Her outfit stands in contrast to the older woman in the middle, perhaps in her fifties who has chosen a more conservative style for travel. She wears a shirtwaist dress, a coat with broad shoulders, and a hat—something a woman of her age regarded as necessary public attire. We don’t see much of the other woman’s outfit besides her Rosie-the-Riveter style head wrap, considered an acceptable hat substitute during the war.
Do you think they met on the bus? In the waiting room? Or did they know each other already?
