Berlin, Germany, Sep. 21, 1948: An American gets his monthly ration of five gallons at the one service station in Berlin still serving privately owned vehicles.

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 Soviet leader Josef Stalin imposed the blockade, cutting 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 in the form of the “lightning bolt” hitting the far right gas pump.

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.

Read Waller’s article and see additional photos here.

Looking for Stars and Stripes’ historic coverage? Subscribe to Stars and Stripes’ historic newspaper archive! We have digitized our 1948-1999 European and Pacific editions, as well as several of our WWII editions and made them available online through https://starsandstripes.newspaperarchive.com/