Beautiful Pics Of Marilyn Monroe Taken By Sam Shaw On The Beach In 1957

New York-based photographer Sam Shaw took these beautiful photos of Marilyn Monroe at 2-months pregnant on the beach in Amagansett, New York in July 1957. Unfortunately, the following month she had a miscarriage. Continue reading »

Incredible Photos Of Violinist Jascha Heifetz Playing In Darkened Studio As Light Attached To His Bow Traces The Bow Movement In 1952

This photograph represents the meeting of two great 20th-century artists. Famed violinist Jascha Heifetz was known for his incredible technical precision, which made him the perfect subject for a series of light paintings by the photographer Gjon Mili. Continue reading »

Unromantic Gypsies: Captivating Black And White Photos Show The Lives Of The Corke’s Meadow Travellers Who Set Up Home In 1950s Kent

Fascinating photos encapsulate what life was like for a traveller community living in Kent in the 1950s. London-born photojournalist Bert Hardy captured the black and white snaps that were published in a collection entitled The Unromantic Gypsies.


Children boxing in a gypsy camp in Kent, England on July 1, 1951. Like all boys these gypsy lads like to try their hand at boxing. Encouraged by their friends they fight it out on Corke’s Meadow. Continue reading »

34 Found Photos Capture People Posing With Their Volkswagens In The 1950s And ’60s

Volkswagen, shortened to VW, is a German automaker founded in 1937 by the German Labour Front a Nazi labour union, and headquartered in Wolfsburg. It is the flagship marque of the Volkswagen Group. Continue reading »

1959 Cadillac Cyclone Concept, An Indication Of The United States Obsession With Jet Design And Aerodynamics

In the 1950s the United States was obsessed with jet plane design, which was applied to other non related products including cars. Between 1949 and 1961 General Motors launched their concept cars every year at the Motorama shows, which were highly anticipated throughout the country. Jet design had already inspired the designers of the three Firebird concepts launched between 1954 and 1950. With their gas turbine engines, they were literally road going jets. In 1959 Cadillac joined the ‘jet age’ with the Cyclone Concept. Continue reading »

The 1958 Plymouth Tornado Concept Car Has Been Found And Restored

The dawn of the jet age in the 1950s had a dramatic effect on the American people and designers of the time. Jets were symbolic of the new modern age of speed, aerodynamics, miracle materials and advanced engineering. Our clothes, homes, workplace and cities all reflected these new modern concepts and approaches, but perhaps nowhere was this influence more apparent than in the auto industry. Continue reading »

The Plague Of Overweight: Photographer Martha Holmes Documented The Struggle Of Obesity People In 1950s America

“Bulging at beach in 1949, 197-pound Dorothy Bradley self-consciously leaves locker room for swim. She covered up embarrassment by being jolly and gregarious”.

Martha Holmes/Time & Life Pictures

“The most serious health problem in the U.S. today is obesity.” Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? But that pronouncement about obesity’s primacy in the hierarchy of national health problems is not new. Rather, it’s the opening line to a remarkable article published 60 years ago in LIFE magazine. This photographs made by Martha Holmes to illustrate that March 1954 article, titled “The Plague of Overweight.” Continue reading »

Beautiful Retro & Romance Fashion Photography By Jerry Schatzberg

On a tricycle, photographer William ‘Bill’ Helburn peddles Italian actress and model Elsa Martinelli, who rides in an attached cart, across Park Ave South, New York, 1954.

Jerry Schatzberg is notably known for his iconic and intimate portraits of famous figures, for example, the defining cover of Blonde and Blonde featuring a scowling Bob Dylan. However, before that sudden switch, Schatzberg was a fashion photographer, trained by the famous Alexey Brodovitch. Here are some of his shots taken for magazines such as Vogue, Esquire, Glamour and McCall’s during the ‘50s and ‘60s. Continue reading »

Wonderful Black And White Photos Of Rome In The Post-WWII

Rome developed greatly after the war as part of the “Italian economic miracle” of post-war reconstruction and modernisation in the 1950s. During this period, the years of la dolce vita (“the sweet life”), Rome became a fashionable city, with popular classic films such as Ben Hur, Quo Vadis, Roman Holiday and La Dolce Vita filmed in the city’s iconic Cinecittà film studios. Continue reading »

Dressed Cats: Postcards From The 1950’s By Artist Eugen Hartung Published By Alfred Mainzer, Inc.

From the 1940s through the 1960s, the Alfred Mainzer Company of Long Island City, NY published a series of linen and photochrome humorous cat postcards illustrated by Eugen Hartung (or Hurtong) (1897–1973), sometimes referred to as “Mainzer Cats”. Continue reading »

Wonderful Color Pics Document The Trailer Life Of An American Family During The 1950s

Picnic by the side of the road, 1953

These wonderful pics from Leon Reed were taken by his father Walter Reed that documented the trailer life of his family around the United States during the 1950s. Continue reading »

Traveller’s Joy – The Key To The Countryside – Beautiful Shell Adverts From The Mid-1950s

From the 1920s and into the 1950s the Shell Oil Company produced some wonderful advertising posters and some said, the most beautiful the country has ever seen.


1954: Arranged and painted by Edith and Rowland Hilder

Looking at these examples from the mid-fifties it’s difficult to argue. It was a different time and the adverts, mostly shown in up-market magazines such as Country Life, show us a view of Britain as a lost rural idyl while, somewhat ironically, promoting not only petrol and oil but motoring in general and where it could take you. It was only Shell petrol and diesel that could give you the exhilarating pleasure and joyous freedom of the countryside. Continue reading »

BMW Isetta: The Iconic Miniature Bubble Car Of Automotive History

The Isetta is an Italian-designed microcar built under license in a number of different countries, including Argentina, Spain, Belgium, France, Brazil, Germany, and the United Kingdom. Because of its egg shape and bubble-like windows, it became known as a bubble car, a name also given to other similar vehicles. Continue reading »

Concepts From Future Past: Cool Pics Of The 1951 Buick LeSabre Concept Car

The LeSabre was the brainchild of GM Design Chief Harley Earl. The design reflected his attempt to merge the modern jet aircraft into the style of the automobile. Jets symbolized the very latest design and engineering and Earl’s ideas transcended into the LeSabre concept. Continue reading »

Sublime Street Photographs Of Hong Kong In The 1950s And 1960s

Hong Kong is all about the food. The smell of delicious stuff, some of it unidentifiable only to Bellamists and delving biology professors and coroners, hangs in air so soupy and thick it seems to be keeping the new skyscrapers upright. I’m wrong, of course. Hong Kong is all about human life, which is everywhere, packed tightly and possessed of an atavistic self-containment – the closest thing modern humanity has to Babel, Jericho or maybe Sodom. Continue reading »

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