Open air schools were purpose-built educational institutions for children, that were designed to prevent and combat the widespread rise of tuberculosis that occurred in the period leading up to the Second World War. The schools were built on the concept…
In the first decades of the 20th century, the Italian Cavalry School at Tor di Quinto near Rome was - along with the French Cavalry School at Saumur - the leading institution for horsemanship in the world. Tor di Quinto was probably the foremost academy fo…
Tens of thousands of soldiers, reservists, and other members of the military were arranged to form massive compositions. Although if viewed from the ground or from directly above, these masses of men would appear meaningless, when seen from the top of a…
In the picture, right next to him is Zito, one of the best midfielders of all time. He was Pelé´s partner in Santos team and Brazil's player in this World Cup. Pelé turned 18 during the 1958 World Cup, helped Brazil to reach the finals, and then win 5-2…
The photo was taken directly after Yamaguchi stabbed Asanuma and is seen here attempting a second stab though he is restrained before that happens. Otoya Yamaguchi was a member of a right-wing ultranationalist Japanese group. Inejiro Asanuma was the lea…
Britain in the 1960s liked to think of itself as a country moving forward. The postwar recovery was well underway, consumer culture was beginning to bloom, and cities across the country were being promoted as symbols of a new, modern age. Behind that image,…
New York City, through much of the 20th century, was a place where power operated in the shadows. The Five Families ruled entire neighborhoods, names like Lucky Luciano, Bugsy Siegel, Meyer Lansky, and Frank Costello commanded fear and respect in equal meas…
At the turn of the twentieth century, one woman carried a camera into one of the most remote and unforgiving landscapes on Earth, and what she brought back changed how the outside world understood the people who had long called it home. These photographs, i…
Before the world had fully processed what fashion could be, Kansai Yamamoto was already living several decades ahead of it. The Japanese designer, born in Yokohama in 1944, built a visual universe rooted in color, spectacle, and a deliberate rejection of re…
Some of the most extraordinary objects ever created by human hands were never meant to be seen by the public. They were built for kings, popes, and aristocrats who wanted their wealth expressed not in square footage or acreage, but in something far more int…
Tucked into train stations, arcades, and neighborhood drugstores, the photobooth offered something rare in mid-20th-century America: a brief moment of privacy in the middle of a busy public space. Behind a small curtain and within the tight frame of a s…
Few episodes in the history of American celebrity activism stirred as much fury or as much debate as Jane Fonda's trip to North Vietnam in the summer of 1972. An outspoken critic of the war for years, Fonda had already made herself a divisive figure at home…
The 21st century has arrived, and yet so many of the technologies people take for granted today look remarkably similar to visions that were sketched out on paper decades ago. That is not a coincidence. The years between 1958 and 1963 represent what man…
Before the speeches, the campaigns, and the weight of the Oval Office, there was a wedding day. In carefully preserved photographs, some formal and stately, others simple and intimate, future presidents appear not as political figures but as grooms standing…
The image of the scarred German military officer has long been a Hollywood staple — cold-eyed, stern-jawed, and bearing a jagged mark across one cheek. It turns out this trope was not entirely invented. Many high-ranking officers who served in both World Wa…
Before satellites, before aircraft, before any technology capable of seeing the Earth from above, human beings were already trying to understand the full shape of the world they inhabited. The maps they produced in that effort tell a story far more fascinat…
Death has always inspired the living to create, to protect, to memorialize, and sometimes, to astonish. Across centuries and continents, the graves of the ordinary and the extraordinary alike have become canvases for human emotion, ingenuity, and occasional…
Hollywood has always been a place of illusion — carefully constructed personas, fabricated romances, and studio-engineered narratives designed to keep audiences captivated and ticket sales climbing. But behind the velvet ropes and the camera flashbulbs, cou…
The golden era of American organized crime unfolded not in shadowy back alleys alone, but in broad daylight—through police mugshots, courtroom photographs, and news images that captured mobsters with an audacity that would seem unthinkable today. These men …
The acrid smoke hung thick in dimly lit basements across America's cities, where customers from society's highest and lowest rungs sought refuge in clouds of vaporized opium. These haunting photographs capture a shadowy chapter of American history when unde…