Intimate Vintage Portraits Documented the Lives of Irish Travellers Outside Dublin in the Late 1960s and Early 1970s
When Alen Macweeney returned to his native Ireland in the 1960s, after working as Richard Avedon’s assistant, he first intended to do a photo essay about W.B. Yeats. His research led him to cover another quintessentially Irish subject, one up to then neglected in photojournalism and Irish society in general. Continue reading »
“Street Life In London”: Photographer Colorized Photos From Over 140 Years Ago
According to Tom Marshall: “In the mid-1870s, Scottish photographer John Thomson captured the daily toil and struggle of the ‘street folks’ of London, in a series of photos that laid the foundations for modern photojournalism. Working with a radical journalist called Adolphe Smith, Thomson produced a monthly magazine ‘Street Life in London’ from 1876 to 1877. Continue reading »
Meet the 1970 AMC Gremlin, America’s First Subcompact Car
The AMC Gremlin is a subcompact car that was made by the American Motors Corporation (AMC) for nine model years. During its manufacturing run from April 1970 through 1978, a total of 671,475 Gremlins were built in the United States and Canada.
The Gremlin was described at its introduction as the first domestic-built American subcompact car. Continue reading »
Wonderful Photos of London’s Tube Riders From the 1960s to 1980s
For more than four decades, photographer Bob Mazzer has been taking pictures on the London Underground. Continue reading »
Beautiful Advertising Photos of Opel Automobiles From the 1950s
Opel is a German automobile manufacturer which was owned by the American automaker General Motors from 1929 until 2017 and the PSA Group, a predecessor of Stellantis, from 2017 until 2021. Continue reading »
Stunning Autochrome Portraits of Women Taken by Alfonse Van Besten From the Early 20th Century
Alfonse Van Besten (1865–1926) was a painter and took full advantage of the possibilities of the new color process. One can see that many of his autochromes were taken with a “painterly eye” e.g. Musing (Mrs.Van Besten) and Symphony in white. It was evident that he had a very good sense of composition. Continue reading »
Stunning Vintage Photos of Woody Station Wagons From the 1960s and 1970s
The iconic American woody (or woodie) wagon dates back to the very beginning of automobile manufacture when car frames were originally made of timber. As metal took over and timber content diminished throughout the 1920s, certain models stubbornly refused to go all-metal. Continue reading »
Stunning Black and White Photos of Manhattan Taken by Berenice Abbott in 1935 and 1936
Seventh Avenue Looking South from 35th Street
An American photographer, Berenice Abbott was a central figure in and important bridge between the photographic circles and cultural hubs of Paris and New York. Continue reading »
Amazing Color Photographs Capture Sun Bathers on the Beach in Cannes, France in 1948
Cannes, resort city of the French Riviera, in Alpes-Maritimes department, Provence-Alpes-Côtes d’Azur region, southeastern France. It lies southwest of Nice. Continue reading »
In the 1970s, American Luxury Cars Were Bursting With Velour and Velvet
The 1970s were an awkward time for America—in fashion, in hair styles, and yes, even in car interiors. In the 1970s, velour and velvet were popular because it fit into the idea of what was luxurious at the time. Continue reading »
The Albee Rolligon: An Innovative Transport Truck From the 1950s
One of the earliest applications of Albee’s low-pressure tires was this three-roller Dodge Power Wagon. Ground pressure was drastically reduced due to the large ground area in contact with the bags, and the low air pressure (from 2.5 to 6 PSI) in the bags. Continue reading »
The Fascinating Giuseppe Arcimboldo’s Portraits Made out Of Fruits, Vegetables and Fish, 1563-1591
“Vertumnus – Rudolf II,” depicts Rudolph II (1552-1612), Holy Roman Emperor from 1576, as Vertumnus, the ancient Roman god of seasons who presided over gardens and orchards. 1590.
Giuseppe Arcimboldo was an Italian painter best known for creating imaginative portrait heads made entirely of such objects as fruits, vegetables, flowers, fish, and books – that is, he painted representations of these objects on the canvas arranged in such a way that the whole collection of objects formed a recognizable likeness of the portrait subject. Continue reading »
Extraordinary Self-Portraits of American Street Photographer Vivian Maier
“She drops her shadow deliberately, usually on desolate backdrops, while she finds her reflection in every reflective surface.” Wrote Luc Sante of Vivian Maier’s self-portraits in the New York Times. Continue reading »
Adhesive Bras: The Stick-On Bra Swimsuit that Was Quite Distinctive in 1949
Nina Leen/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images/Mashable.com
In May 1949, Charles L. Langs announced a daring innovation in beachwear: a pair of bra cups a woman could affix to her breasts with an adhesive. His idea was to use individual strapless cups for each breast, backed with specially developed glue. Continue reading »
Ukraine-Born American Artist Boris Artzybasheff’s Anti-Nazi Illustrations
Boris Artzybasheff (25 May 1899 – 16 July 1965) created many of these abstract anti-Axis illustrations for America’s Wickwire Spencer Steel Company (1901 – 1963) in World War II. Continue reading »
Dayalets’ Hellish Vitamin Mascots Intended to Promote a Healthy Diet From the 1950s
Nothing really prepares you for the Dayalets. As you can gather from the cover, they were vitamins, but they were so much more: they were vitamins suitable for framing. Continue reading »
Once Upon The War: Introducing The Kharkiv School of Photography
Kharkiv School of Photography is an artistic milieu that emerged in the 1970s in the city of Kharkiv, Ukraine. It was a school of aesthetic thought which never had any official status, where ‘education’ happened in clubs and coffee shops — not a school to attend classes. Still, the artists created an original visual language that broke free from the dominant Soviet dogma in arts. It defined the discourse for the next generations in Kharkiv and entire Ukraine and evolved into a distinctive aesthetic system, offering a documentary chronicle of over 50 years of its history.
Heavily bombed by the Russian army, several photographers of the group still remain in Kharkiv, as others managed to escape leaving their archives behind. An operation to preserve these documents is ongoing.
Ukraine-Russia/Volleyball, 1992
Viktor & Sergiy Kochetov/Alexandra de Viveiros Gallery
Viktor Kochetov creates work with his son Sergiy. They are well-known for hand-colouring black and white prints in the tradition of luriki — enlarged, retouched and often tinted photographic portraits. Continue reading »
Looney Tunes: The Original Model Sheets
Enjoy a Collection of 50+ Original Model Sheets from the classics Looney Tunes ! Looney Tunes is an American animated series of comedy short films produced by Warner Bros. from 1930 to 1969. Continue reading »
Documenting America: Scenes of Early-Century New York City Life in Paintings of John French Sloan
Sunday Women, Drying Their Hair, 1912
John French Sloan (August 2, 1871 – September 7, 1951) was an American painter and etcher. He is considered to be one of the founders of the Ashcan school of American art. Continue reading »
Wake Up Little Susie: Vintage Photos That Show Styles of Teenagers in the 1950s
The term ‘teenager’ was first introduced to the American public in the 1940s as a moniker coined by advertising executives looking to sell their products to a new audience. Continue reading »
“Blow Up to Be the Size You Want!” – Vintage Inflatable Bra Ads From the 1950s and 1960s
What was a woman to do if she wanted to boost her cleavage in the days before Wonderbra was on the market and the more drastic measure of plastic surgery wasn’t so readily available? The answer is by wearing an inflatable bra that the wearer could blow up to the size they desired themselves. Continue reading »
Fascinating Vintage Photographs of Scooter Enthusiasts in Nebraska, 1945
Dmitiri Kessel/LIFE Picture Collection
The Cushman scooter company started in 1903 in Lincoln, Nebraska, by Everett and Clinton Cushman. The company incorporated as Cushman Motor Works in 1913. Cushman began production of their four-stroke Husky engine in 1922. Continue reading »
Beautiful Kodachrome Photos of Life in New York in the Late 1960s
Pace/MacGill Gallery
Tod Papageorge was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire in 1940, and began to photograph in 1962 during his last semester at the University of New Hampshire. Little more than a month later, after running across reproductions of two pictures made by Henri Cartier-Bresson, he decided to be a photographer. Continue reading »
In 1908, a Doctor Used X-Rays to Highlight the Damaging Effects of Tight Corsets on a Woman’s Body
Ludovic O’Followell, a French doctor who in 1905 and 1908 published books on the effects of the corset on female health. O’Followell, however, had something that all the previous arguments and illustrations did not: he used a brand new technology to bolster his arguments. Continue reading »
Antonin Personnaz’s Autochrome Dreams Of Early 20th Century France
Between 1907 and 1914, art collector Antonin Personnaz (1854 – 31 December 1936) took autochrome pictures of France’s Oise Valley. His dreamy, impressionist-style photographs call to mind the work of the artists he knew, like Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Albert Lebourg and Jean-François Raffaelli, Camille Pissarro and Paul Gachet. Continue reading »
