In 1908, photographer Lewis Hine was hired by the American Child Protection Council to report and document the working conditions and exploitation of children (or as they were called: underage laborers) across the United States. He traveled around the c…
A cucumber forms a bulbous nose; the open maul of a wolf simulates an eye; a striking iron is an ear; a shark is a mouth; a pile of books composes a torso. These are some of the startling details in the composite paintings by Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1526-1…
Imagine getting on a train and leaving your parents and your family behind. Imagine arriving in a new place, where you don’t speak the language and where everything is different. People wear clothes that seem strange; the food is different too. Imagine …
Picasso’s self-portraits are important because they span his entire career, and we can trace how his manner of self-depiction changed over time. It’s interesting to compare the self-portraits from, for instance, the Blue Period to those done when he was…
During World War II, letters were essential for soldiers and sailors stationed overseas. The average soldier wrote six letters a week. Those letters took anywhere from 1 to 4 weeks to cross the ocean to the United States. Each letter received at home assure…
After World War II had ended, the surrendered Japan was devastated. All the large cities, industries, and transportation networks were severely damaged. A severe shortage of food continued for several years. Allied forces led by the United States occupi…
From the 1960s to the late 1980s, New York City’s iconic Times Square was a difficult place to be. Felony and crime rates were high, despite heightened police existence. A plethora of go-go bars, sex shops, peep show establishments, and adult theaters becam…
In 1942, twenty-one-year-old Esther Bubley, accepted a position with the Office of War Information (OWI) in Washington, D.C. to work as a darkroom lab technician. The OWI had recently absorbed the Farm Security Administration (FSA) and their stable of l…
In April 2003 Jørn Utzon, at the age of 85, was awarded the Pritzker Prize ─architecture’s ‘Nobel’. The citation reads: ‘There is no doubt that Sydney Opera House is his masterpiece. It is one of the great iconic buildings of the twentieth century, an i…
The World Trade Center project was initiated in the early 1960s through the influence of David Rockefeller in part to reclaim a part of the city that had fallen on hard times. The vision was meant to use the trade facility and urban renewal as tools to clea…
These photographs, taken by the Lomen family, capture the indigenous Yupik Eskimo and the prospectors of the Gold Rush in Alaska during the early decades of the 20th century. The term "Eskimo" is used in Alaska to refer to arctic Alaskans including Inup…
Early on the morning of September 11, 2001, the United States seemed to be just about the safest place in the world to live. The nation hadn’t been attacked on its own soil since the bombing of Pearl Harbor six decades before. War seemed like something t…
The Kwakwa̱ka̱’wakw (or Kwakiutl) are Pacific Northwest Coast Indigenous people. Most live in British Columbia on northern Vancouver Island and the adjoining mainland, and on islands around Johnstone Strait and Queen Charlotte Strait. Originally made up…
In the early years of the 20th century, a number of circuses toured Northern Ireland providing entertainment, tricks, and a lot of excitement for the crowds. Though the dim lighting condition inside the circus’ tent prevented images from being made of t…
Stunt shows featuring diving horses began in the 1880s and were a wildly popular attraction for decades, despite the obvious cruelty to the animals and the danger it posed, ironically, it would seem, more for the riders than the horses' theme. According…
The Victorian Era may not have been the start of the institutionalization of patients with mental health problems, but it was certainly a period when the number of asylums and patients treated within them, exploded. Whether this rise was mainly due to a…
Local historians routinely disagree on how many Cliff Houses have been built in the wind-beaten northwestern edge of San Francisco. Three is the most common answer, some argue that four is correct, and even fice has its partisans. But everyone does agre…
This collection of photographs shows some of the world's oldest and oddest vending machines. Nowadays almost anything imaginable can now be purchased from the vending machines, however, the trend for automated purchases is nothing new, as these vintage phot…
In the 1970s, New York City was a broken, ungovernable metropolis barreling into anarchy. New Yorkers remember this decade as the bleakest, most crime-ridden, and most uncertain time the city has ever faced. It was a time of economic, criminal, and cultura…
This collection of photos from Naval Air Station Corpus Christi during World War II shows the American war effort at full speed and the air cadets in training. The facility covered 20,000 acres (81 km2) and had 997 hangars, shops, barracks, warehouses, …