The Louisiana Division's photograph collections include one large group of photographs called the General Interest Collection. This artifical grouping contains photographs that have made their way into the collection over the years from disparate sources. Many of the photographs have lost their "provenance," the original source of the donation or deposit, and many of them are unidentified. Since precise information about how the photographs first came into the collection is unusally unclear, these photographs were simply arranged into general subject headings and categorized as "General Interest."

The General Interest Collection is eclectic in the extreme. Some of the best examples of the oddities that can be found in the collection are the photographs included in the "Costume" subject category. Although some of the subjects of these photographs are actually wearing fancy-dress costumes, the main criteria for including photographs in this category seemed to be that the images pictured people wearing "spiffy," "dated," or, dare we say, "ugly" clothing.

We hope you enjoy this not-so-serious array of attire from yesteryear.

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6/30/2004