Berlin, West Germany, Sep. 21, 1948: Three months in, the meat department at the Berlin commissary in West Berlin’s American Sector still offers the same variety as it did before the Berlin Blockade.

The image is one of a series of 9 shot Sep. 21, 1948 by Stars and Stripes photographer Gerald Waller titled “Berlin Americans live normal life,” to show how Americans were adapting living in Berlin during the Berlin Blockade which began June 24, 1948 when Josef Stalin, Soviet leader, cut off all land and river transit between West Berlin and West Germany. In response, Western Allies initiated a massive airlift to get supplies into beleaguered Berlin.

The original negative that this image was captured on suffers from a preservation issue called “silvering,” where the silver particles rise to the top of the gelatin layer of the film — you can see evidence of it above the price board on the left. During a preservation survey of Stripes’ photo collection in 2018, archives staff found that especially the 4x5 negatives from the late 1940s and early 1950s were suffering the most from this preservation issue. As the “silvering” will eventually cause the image captured on the negative to fade, the affected negatives were pulled and prioritized for scanning.

See the other photos and the short article that accompanied the five published here.