Related Berea Sound Archives Sites
- Traditional Music and Spoken Word Performances This link opens in a new windowListen to selected musical performances and storytelling from the Berea Sound Archives.
- Alan Lomax Kentucky CollectionListen to ocumentary sound recordings of rural Kentucky music and lore collected under the auspices of the Archive of American Folk Song at the Library of Congress between 1933 and 1942.
- Oral History Collections GuideBerea's online oral history collections cover a broad range of topics in the areas of Appalachian history and culture, and the history of Berea College. In many instances searchable transcripts accompany the digitized audio recordings.
- Examples of Oral Histories For Use As Primary SourcesSelected interview texts and recordings covering a wide range of topics.
- Sound Recording Analysis WorksheetA teaching / learning resource from the National Archives.
- Sound Archives Research GuidesResearch guides are the work of Archives staff and the College's Sound Archives Fellows. Using audio and video illustrations, the guides cover a wide range of topics.
- Sound Preservation ProgramThe program's focus is on Berea's collections of noncommercial recordings that document Appalachian history and culture and the history of Berea College.
- Berea Sound Archives HomepageBrowse By Topic
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Norman Ball Photographic Collection 1940s
Alongside The G.I. Journal of Sergeant Giles, the Norman Ball Photographic Collection (BCA 0212 HC 37) offers a unique glimpse of the war from an American soldier’s point of view. The collection begins with a few artifacts of army life at the time: ration cards, R & R passes, and Army records, and is followed by an extensive collection of wartime photographs. Ball’s portfolio is exhaustive and is particularly striking for its series of portraits of his friends and colleagues: airmen at ease.
He also documents the ravaged European landscape: there are many images of ruins, aerial shots of planes that appear to be dropping bombs, and pictures of makeshift burial grounds—fields bearing the temporary grave markers (irregularly sized wooden planks) with dog tags nailed to their centers.
The imagery of the Ball collection is both detailed and profound; documenting both the atrocities of war as well as the more mundane, even relaxed, moments of a soldier’s life off the battlefield. Many of the photographs will be used to inspire Patrick’s letters to Eve in Chapter Three, especially as he attempts to draw Eve a portrait of the war-‐torn landscape and the personalities of his fellow soldiers. The images evoked by his letters, in conjunction with her interest in medicine and Patrick’s death in combat, compel Eve to join the Army Corps of Nurses in the book’s conclusion.
