Rare Female Portraits of Rural America From the Early 20th Century

These female portraits made by an itinerant photographer named Hugh Mangum, who rode the trains to the small towns of North Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia in 1909-1912. They’re notably unusual for the period by their informal and lighthearted style.

At the beginning of his photographic career in the early 1890s, Mangum maintained a darkroom in a tobacco pack house on the Mangum farm at West Point on the Eno River in Durham. Over the years, he moved to Virginia and partnered with colleagues to operate photography studios in Roanoke, Pulaski, and East Radford, Virginia.

See more»

Clint Eastwood Skateboarding on Via Veneto, Rome in 1965

In the 1960s, Clint Eastwood rose to fame in the Dollars Trilogy which would break him into mainstream cinema in the United States. Here, Eastwood was photographed by Elio Sorci in 1965 while skateboarding on Via Veneto, one of the most famous, elegant and expensive streets of Rome, Italy.

Vintage Photos From a Ball-Point Bathing Suits Party in January 1950

In 1950, LIFE magazine published photos from an event dubbed “Ball Point Bathing Suits”… a racy cocktail party / fashion show at which popular strip cartoonists were invited to draw all over models in white swimtanks.

“All that’s missing is a bunch of those cartoon sweat drops surrounding the heads of these guys as they try to get a ballpoint pen to draw over the nylon-encased curves of the models” wrote Heidi McDonald, setting off a small re-post virus.

See more»

Amazing Vintage Photos of the Cliff House in San Francisco From the Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries

Four different variations of the Cliff House have stood on the cliffs overlooking Seal Rocks, at the Northwest corner of San Francisco. Two earlier versions were rather modestly small in size, especially when compared with the elaborate eight-story Victorian building which stood on that spot from 1896 to 1907 as the third Cliff House. And when that ornate version of the building burned down, the fourth version to be built was designed more like the first two: simple, and made to blend in with the ocean and cliffs surrounding it. That fourth version is still standing today.

(via Once Upon a Town)

Black and White Photos of Bronx Boys From the 1970s and 1980s

A 1977 assignment for Look magazine took Stephen Shames to the Bronx, where he began photographing a group of boys coming of age in what was at the time one of the toughest and most dangerous neighborhoods in the United States.

The Bronx boys lived on streets ravaged by poverty, drugs, violence, and gangs in an adolescent "family" they created for protection and companionship. Shames's profound empathy for the boys earned their trust, and over the next two-plus decades, as the crack cocaine epidemic devastated the neighborhood, they allowed him extraordinary access into their lives on the street and in their homes and "crews."

Bronx Boys presents an extended photo essay that chronicles the lives of these kids growing up in the Bronx. Shames captures the brutality of the times—the fights, shootings, arrests, and drug deals—that eventually left many of the young men he photographed dead or in jail.

But he also records the joy and humanity of the Bronx boys, who mature, fall in love, and have children of their own. One young man Shames mentored, Martin Dones, provides riveting details of living in the Bronx and getting caught up in violence and drugs before caring adults helped him turn his life around. Challenging our perceptions of a neighborhood that is too easily dismissed as irredeemable, Bronx Boys shows us that hope can survive on even the meanest streets.

“Pilo Wall.” Teenage boy with toy gun. His son is at left. Two teens kiss, 1985.

Rafael, 13, jumps from one building to the next, eight stories up, 1977.

Teenage boys jump into a public swimming pool at night. They climbed over the fence, 1984.

Teenage couple kisses on steps, 1982.

See more»

Interesting Black and White Photos Capture Street Scenes of New York City in the Late 1960s

James Jowers interest in photography began while serving in the United States Army where he was trained in darkroom procedures. In 1965 he became a student at the New School and studied under Lisette Model, who later became a close friend and mentor. At this time he was living on the Lower East Side and worked as a night porter at St. Luke’s Hospital; leaving him free to explore the City during the day and photograph life as he encountered it on the streets. Model later introduced Jowers to the Nancy Palmer Photo Agency where he was represented for several years.

See more»

Rare Photos of Behind the scenes from "The Night of the Hunter" (1955)

The Night of the Hunter is a 1955 American thriller film directed by Charles Laughton and starring Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters and Lillian Gish. The film is based on the 1953 novel of the same name by Davis Grubb, adapted for the screen by James Agee and Laughton. Its plot focuses on a corrupt reverend-turned-serial killer who uses his charms to woo an unsuspecting widow and her two children in an attempt to steal a fortune hidden by the woman's dead husband. The novel and film draw on the true story of Harry Powers, hanged in 1932 for the murders of two widows and three children in Clarksburg, West Virginia. Here are six rare images reveal relaxed moments with Robert Mitchum and Charles Laughton during the making of a terrifying American classic.

10 Beautiful Advertisements of the First Kodak Brownie Cameras in the 1910s

By far the most significant event in the history of amateur photography was the introduction of the Kodak #1 camera in 1888. Invented and marketed by George Eastman (1854–1932), a former bank clerk from Rochester, New York, the Kodak was a simple box camera that came loaded with a 100-exposure roll of film. When the roll was finished, the entire machine was sent back to the factory in Rochester, where it was reloaded and returned to the customer while the first roll was being processed.

Although the Kodak was made possible by technical advances in the development of roll film and small, fixed-focus cameras, Eastman’s real genius lay in his marketing strategy. By simplifying the apparatus and even processing the film for the consumer, he made photography accessible to millions of casual amateurs with no particular professional training, technical expertise, or aesthetic credentials. To underscore the ease of the Kodak system, Eastman launched an advertising campaign featuring women and children operating the camera, and coined the memorable slogan: “You press the button, we do the rest.”

In February 1900, the first of the famous Brownie cameras was introduced. It sold for $1 and used film that sold for 15 cents a roll. For the first time, the hobby of photography was within the financial reach of virtually everyone. Below is a collection of 10 beautiful advertisements of the first Kodak Brownie cameras in the 1910s.

See more»

20 Fascinating Vintage Photographs Capture Everyday Life in the Netherlands From the Early 20th Century

“Netherlands” literally means “lower countries,” influenced by its low land and flat geography, with only about 50% of its land exceeding 1 meter (3 ft 3 in) above sea level. Most of the areas below sea level are artificial.

Modern urbanization in the Netherlands took place mainly in the 20th century. In 1900 more than half the population was still living in villages or towns of fewer than 10,000 inhabitants. A century later this proportion had decreased to about one-tenth. There has, nevertheless, been a decrease in the city-proper populations of the large metropolitan centers. These inner cities are now becoming economic and cultural centers, their populations having spread outward in search of newer housing and greater living space in suburbs, new residential quarters of rural settlements, and new towns.

In the 1960s and ’70s the authorities stimulated this development by subsidizing house building in a number of so-called growth nuclei and by moving several groupings of public offices from the western core area of the country to more-rural areas in the north, east, and south. More recently, however, government planning policy has aimed at again concentrating the population in and around the existing cities, especially in the western portion of the country.

Below is a collection of 20 interesting vintage photos that capture everyday life in the Netherlands from between the 1900s and 1920s.

See more»

The First World War in Color Photographs

See more»