These photos, taken by the Office of War Information photographer John Collier in 1943, show the Maine woodsmen of the Brown Company on a dangerous spring lumber drive. The men were tasked with guiding thousands of heavy, slippery logs on the spring pul…
Spirit photography began in the late 19th century, around the time that the spiritualism movement was gaining traction across Europe and the United States. The photographers who practiced it claimed that they could capture images of portrait subjects and th…
As the consequences of the Great Depression, unemployment, poverty, and the effects of the Dust Bowl ravaged the country in the 1930s, government programs such as the Farm Security Administration (FSA) were established. American photographers were employed to …
Umbrella Rock on top of Lookout Mountain was one of the more iconic tourist spots from the 1880s through the 1940s. These images, assembled by Chattanooga’s local historical organization Picnooga, capture almost 60 years of photo opportunities on Umbrel…
Dorothy Counts made national news in September 1957, when at the age of 15, she became one of the first and, at the time, the only black student to enroll in the newly desegregated Harry Harding High School in Charlotte (North Carolina). This came nearl…
Stereographs were a very popular form of photography in the 19th century. Photographers would take two nearly identical images which, when printed side by side, would appear as a three-dimensional image when viewed through a set of special lenses called a ster…
During the Second World War, Londoners of all classes flocked to Underground platforms to keep themselves safe from the destruction that was being wrought above the ground by the German bombers. The Blitz refers to the strategic bombing campaign conducted b…
These stunning photos of the Hollywood icon Marilyn Monroe were captured by photographer John Florea during the 1950s. The mere name of Marilyn Monroe represents different images for different people. For some, it suggests the absolute standard of female se…
Starting from the 1890s, the famous Dutch impressionist painter George Hendrik Breitner (1857 – 1923) used his camera to record the everyday life in the streets of Amsterdam. He found photographs to be a useful tool for capturing fleeting conditions of …
Robert McGee is one of the few people in American frontier history to survive having his flesh ripped from his skull. In 1890, photographer E.E. Henry took this rare photograph of Robert McGee displaying his scalping scars. This is the story of how Robe…
In 1942, Office of War Information photographer Alfred T. Palmer visited Fort Knox and captured these spectacular photos of tank crews in training. With the outbreak of World War II in Europe, the American Army prepared with the creation of the Armored Forc…
The Rutland State Fair in Rutland, Vermont, renamed the Vermont State Fair in 1972, is one of the oldest state fairs in the United States. It started in 1846 and originally started out as a one-day event. By 1849, the fair had become so popular the Rutland …
Frank Hurley was an Australian photographer who became the Australian Imperial Forces’ second official war photographer. When he arrived at the Western Front his rank was honorary captain, but the troops, seeing how he took risks to get his pictures, du…
In 1972, the United States federal government, which was looking to document living conditions among Native American communities, employed the services of photographer Terry Eiler to visit the south-west of the country and give an outsider view into the li…
Not many people know that the famous American author Jack London was also a skilled documentary photographer and photojournalist. He took thousands of pictures over the years from the slums of London’s East End to the islands of the South Pacific. In…
The only thing as impressive as the Empire State Building are the men who built it and during that time rules for construction workers were a lot laxer than they are today. The hardworking men way up high who were moving girders, riveting, painting, and eve…
These stunning color postcards of Tunisia show its vibrant streets, spectacular architecture, and the everyday life of Tunisian people. Produced in 1899, the postcards were printed using the popular Photochrom technique invented by a Swiss printer in th…
These late-19th and early-20th century photographs show some of the last Maori women to wear the traditional Tā moko face marking before it was outlawed by British colonialists. Ta moko is the name for the permanent body and face marking by Maori, the indi…
The crinoline appeared on the fashion scene in the mid-1800s and took its name from the French word crin (“horsehair”), a stiff material made using horsehair — and "linen." A crinoline (hoop) is defined as a framework consisting of round/oval circles (s…
Manzanar, Spanish for “apple orchard,” began soon after 1900 in the dream of a fruit-growing empire and today is a national symbol of America’s decision at the onset of World War II to confine thousands of its citizens of Japanese ancestry behind barbed wi…