38 Black and White Photographs of Paris Taken by Robert Doisneau in the 1940s and 1950s

Robert Doisneau(April 14, 1912, Gentilly, Val-de-Marne – April 1, 1994) was a French photographer. In the 1930s he used a Leica on the streets of Paris; together with Henri Cartier-Bresson he was a pioneer of photojournalism. He is renowned for his 1950 image Le baiser de l'hôtel de ville (Kiss by the Hôtel de Ville), a photo of a couple kissing in the busy streets of Paris. Robert Doisneau was appointed a Chevalier (Knight) of the National Order of the Légion d'honneur in 1984.

Below is a gallery of 38 amazing black and white photographs of Paris taken by Robert Doisneau from between the 1940s and 1950s.

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Amazing Color Photographs of Picasso Painting in Light in 1949

When LIFE magazine’s Gjon Mili, a technical prodigy and lighting innovator, visited Pablo Picasso in the South of France in 1949, it was clear that the meeting of these two artists and craftsmen was bound to result in something extraordinary. Mili showed Picasso some of his photographs of ice skaters with tiny lights affixed to their skates, jumping in the dark — and the Spanish genius’s lively, ever-stirring mind began to race.

According to LIFE, Picasso gave Mili 15 minutes to try one experiment. He was so fascinated by the result that he posed for five sessions, projecting 30 drawings of centaurs, bulls, Greek profiles and his signature. Mili took his photographs in a darkened room, using two cameras, one for side view, another for front view. By leaving the shutters open, he caught the light streaks swirling through space.

This series of photographs, known ever since as Picasso’s “light drawings,” were made with a small electric light in a darkened room; in effect, the images vanished as soon as they were created — and yet they still live, six decades later, in Mili’s playful, hypnotic images. Many of them were also put on display in early 1950 in a show at New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

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Amazing Vintage Photographs Capture Everyday Life in Omaha, Nebraska in November 1938

“I spent a cold November week in Omaha and walked a hundred miles. Was it Kearney Street where unemployed men sat all day on the steps of cheap hotels? A tattoo parlor, and the city mission with its soup kitchen. Men hanging around the stockyards. One morning I photographed a grain elevator: pure sun-brushed silo columns of cement rising from behind CB&Q freight car. The genius of Walker Evans and Charles Sheeler welded into one supreme photographic statement, I told myself. Then it occurred to me that it was I who was looking at the grain elevator. For the past year I had been sedulously aping the masters. And in Omaha I realized that I had developed my own style with the camera. I knew that I would photograph only what pleased me or astonished my eye, and only in the way I saw it.”

John F. Vachon (May 19, 1914 – April 20, 1975) was an American photographer. He worked as a filing clerk for the Farm Security Administration before Roy Stryker recruited him to join a small group of photographers, including Esther Bubley, Marjory Collins, Mary Post Wolcott, Jack Delano, Arthur Rothstein, Walker Evans, Russell Lee, Gordon Parks, Charlotte Brooks, Carl Mydans, Dorothea Lange and Ben Shahn, who were employed to publicize the conditions of the rural poor in America.

Cars and parking meters

Nebraska is the white spot of the nation

Danbaum armored car

On a streetcar

Unemployed men who ride the freight trains from Omaha to Kansas City and St. Louis and back

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Vintage Photos Captured Daily Life in Saigon, Vietnam From the 19th Century

A street in 1866

At a market (1890)

Vendors (1890)

Pedestrians (1900)

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Hidden Mothers: 22 Creepy Studio Portraits of Faceless Mummies Behind Their Babies in the Victorian Era

Have you ever had difficulties trying to get a baby to sit down and pose for a picture? It’s a huge headache now, but it was even harder for mothers in the Victorian era, when camera technology made posing for photographs difficult.

Early pioneering photographers in the late 1820s had to wait hours for camera exposures. Even though exposure times had been drastically cut down to about 30 seconds by Victorian times, mothers still had to go to very strange and creepy-looking measures to get their children to sit still for a photo.

Babies had to be held by their mothers who, with the best of intentions, hid themselves in quite peculiar and creepy ways so they could calm their child and also stay out of the shot. What‘s even more spine-chilling is the fact that mothers sometimes also did this to hold up their dead children for final portraits before being buried.

Still, we can’t help but get the creeps looking at these draped grim reaper-like forms holding up the kiddos…

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Girl Watcher #2: A 1959 Magazine That Gives Creepy Tips To Men On How To Stalk Girls

The second issue of Girl Watcher.

It may have been intended as a joke, but few women - past or present - are likely to find much humor in pages from a '50s magazine instructing readers how to 'stalk and collect pretty girls'.

At first glance, the June 1959 issue of Girl Watcher magazine appears to be a typical '50s pinup publication. But closer examination reveals it to be a highly sexualized attempt at parodying the satirical Mad Magazine.

Featuring disturbing articles such as 'Some Advanced Field Notes on Stalking The Girl' and 'More About Collecting Pretty Girls,' the magazine attempted comedy through perverted humour in what reads like an open letter to ambitious, real life, predators of women.

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22 Black and White Photographs Capture Street Life in Post-War Paris

Izraelis Bidermanas (1911-1980), who worked under the name of Izis, was a Lithuanian-Jewish photographer who worked in France and is best known for his photographs of French circuses and of Paris.

Izraelis fled Lithuania after the assassination of his parents by the Nazis to settle in Paris. Promptly, he captured the capital in its postwar picturesque atmosphere with lovers kissing, children playing but also the city’s graphic walls and gloomy ruins.

With Paris des Rêves published in 1950 and in which poets such as Jean Cocteau or André Breton had been invited to write a poem alongside one of the photographer’s image, Izis met with an important success. Close to the Surrealist movement and a friend of Marc Chagall, the Lithuanian photographer produced pictures that depicted his idealistic Paris: romantic yet distant, poetic yet grave, photographs that diffused a blurry melancholy and a tender absurdity. That is maybe why Izis, although he was recognized as a major humanist photographer, never reached Robert Doisneau or Edouard Boubat’s popularity. His Paris was too sad, too heavy-hearted for a population that needed lightness and joy in World War II’s aftermath.

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Felines on Film: The Black Cat Auditions in Hollywood, 1961

“The biggest invitation to bad luck ever seen in one place” - LIFE magazine, 1961

Cats hate being on leads at the best of times, so what’s going on in these curious photos of kitties on leashes lined up with their owners?

These photos were taken by legendary LIFE photographer Ralph Crane in 1961. They show over 150 of the cutest and fluffiest of budding actors auditioning for a starring role in the film adaptation of Edgar Allen Poe’s The Black Cat.

In the story, the cat’s owner plasters him into a wall, along with his murdered wife. Eventually, the animal’s mewing from beyond the grave leads investigators to the woman’s body. The film adaptation, which would appear in the 1962 horror compilation Tales of Terror, adjusted the storyline by weaving in elements of another Poe tale.

Exactly 152 cats showed up for the audition, all of them “considerably less nervous than their owners.” Several were disqualified thanks to white paws or noses, but even for those left in the running, the day left dreams largely dashed. The lead role, it turned out, had already been filled by “a well-known professional cat.” Seven lucky extras, selected on account of having the meanest looking faces, were chosen as understudies.

Their owners, whose ambitions for their pets might just have exceeded those of the pets themselves, couldn’t help but let superstition get the best of them. Although they acted naturally around their own cats, “many took pains not to let any strange black cats cross their paths.”

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Incredible Photos Show the Terrifying Conditions for Empire State Building Construction Workers in the 1930s

The Empire State Building is a 102-story landmark skyscraper and American cultural icon in New York City at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and West 34th Street. It has a roof height of 1,250 feet (381 meters), and with its antenna spire included, it stands a total of 1,454 ft (443.2 m) high. Its name is derived from the nickname for New York, the Empire State. It stood as the world's tallest building for 40 years, from its completion in 1931 until construction of the World Trade Center's North Tower was completed in 1972. Following the destruction of the World Trade Center in 2001, the Empire State Building once again became the tallest building in New York.

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Vintage Photos of Ringo Starr and Ewa Aulin on the Set of the Film 'Candy' in 1968

The movie Candy was released in 1968. Noteable for the movie acting debut of Ringo Starr, playing the mexican gardener Emanuel, and for the featuring of two songs by Steppenwolf and one by the Byrds.

Swedish actress Ewa Aulin played the title character. Her movie career took off after winning the title of Miss Teen Sweden in 1965 at age 15, and then later the title of Miss Teen International 1966.

Besides Candy, she appeared mostly in Italian films. Many of her films were sex comedies, but she also made a few thrillers and horror films.

Candy was one of many psychedelic movies that appeared in the late sixties. Critics never liked the picture and particularly disliked Marlon Brando as a guru. In later years, however, it has became a cult classic.

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