Stalin didn’t have Photoshop, but that didn’t keep him from wiping the traces of his enemies from the history books. Using tools that now seem impossibly primitive, Soviet proto-Photoshoppers made "once-famous personalities vanish" and crafted photograp…
During World War II, major powers across the globe utilized propaganda posters as a means of communication and persuasion. In the context of this conflict, Japanese propaganda posters stand out for their remarkable artistic quality and distinctive messa…
During the Second World War, propaganda posters in the United States were commonly seen on a walk or commute to work, a trip to the store, in a newspaper or magazine, and any other time one went around town. Posters were not the only form of propaganda used…
These posters were published in the Soviet anti-religious magazine, Bezbozhnik (“The Godless”) from 1922 to 1941. The main purpose of the magazine was to thwart any religious beliefs that were supposedly too distracting for the working class. The magazi…
In 1966 Mao Zedong, the Communist leader of China, started a political campaign that became known as the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). Mao called on China's youth to help him purge capitalist influences and bourgeois thinking in government, teaching,…
In the first days of July 1917, a spontaneous uprising erupted in Petrograd. The July Days, as this uprising became known, was fuelled by several factors: the Provisional Government’s attempt to escalate the war effort, a collapse in the government ministr…
A room full of women are working hard at emulating the “real danger” present in the master poster hanging in the background. It looks like some kind of class, like a high school or college art class. They may be all working on the same poster because th…
These photographs were taken in 1940 by John Topham while he was visiting the base of the Royal Artillery Coastal Defence Battery at Shornemead Fort, near Gravesend, in Kent. The intention had been to photograph the British troops rehearsing in drag for the…
TIME magazine decided to create a list of the 100 most influential pictures ever taken. They teamed up with curators, historians, photo editors, and famous photographers around the world for this task. "No formula makes for iconic photos," the editors said. …
The photos on display here are taken by Hugo Jager, a former personal photographer of Adolf Hitler. He traveled with Hitler in the years leading up to power and throughout World War II. He was one of the few photographers who were using color photograph…
Yakov Dzhugashvili, Stalin's elder son, served in the Red Army during the Second World War, and was captured, or surrendered, in the initial stages of the German invasion of the USSR. There are still many contradictory legends in circulation about the d…
The future once looked like a promise of endless possibilities, with flying cars humming above neon-lit cities and meals arriving in pill form at the push of a button. This vision, known as retrofuturism, captures how people of the past imagined the world w…
Journeying through history often feels distant when peering at faded black and white photographs that seem to belong to another world. The mind craves color, yearning for a connection that black and white imagery struggles to provide. Adding color to pho…
Before modern air travel and first-class suites, the grandest thing in luxury air travel was the German Zeppelin airship. The Hindenburg was designed to ferry passengers across the Atlantic in serenity, with the dirigible floating smoothly through the c…
Field Marshal Erwin Rommel famously declared and predicted: "The war will be won or lost on the beaches. We'll have only one chance to stop the enemy and that's while he's in the water... struggling to get ashore... everything we have must be on the coast... t…
The Warsaw Uprising of 1944 was a heroic and tragic 63-day struggle to liberate World War 2 Warsaw from German occupation. The Uprising began on 1 August 1944 as part of a nationwide Operation Tempest, launched at the time of the Soviet Lublin–Brest Offensi…
These images were taken in German-occupied Paris by André Zucca for the German propaganda magazine Signal using rare Agfacolor film supplied by the Wehrmacht. The shots depict fashionable young women and commuters mixed with German soldiers on the bustling …
These incredible color photographs of the German battlefront during the First World War, 1914-1918, were taken by Hans Hildenbrand. Although color photography has existed since at least 1879, it didn't become popular until many decades later. The ove…
The Berlin Wall’s story began in the early hours of August 13th, 1961, when the government of East Germany ordered the closure of all borders between East and West Berlin. As the sun rose that morning, Berliners were awoken by the sound of trucks, jackh…
Let’s imagine that World War II wasn't about invading countries, killing people, and achieving world domination. Instead, it was a fashion contest to create the most stylish military pictures. In other words - let’s think that the objective was for ordi…