A Trip to Chicago in Natural Color

SP’s 1938 brochure for the budget-priced Californian was printed in black-and-white with red trim. For 1940, SP issued an all-new brochure printed in “natural color,” meaning Kodachrome photographs printed with the CYMK four-color process. Although this is a great improvement, the colors all look a little off to me, perhaps a little too much magenta and a little too contrasty.

Click image to download a 3.1-MB PDF of this brochure.

Unlike most railroad advertising, this one names many of the passengers shown in the pictures as well as the two photographers, one of whom shows up in one of the pictures. The implication is that these aren’t just models. One of the photographers, Seymour Snaer, was certainly real; at least, there was a Seymour Snaer from Oakland who worked as a freelance photographer when this brochure was made.


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