Stunning Found Slides of Models From Amherst, July 1963

These stunning found slides, date-stamped July 1963 and discovered in a box labeled “Models, Amherst, 1963,” offer a fascinating glimpse into early 1960s fashion and portrait photography.

Captured in Amherst, the photos feature young models posing in the stylish clothing and hairstyles of the era, reflecting the clean lines, youthful optimism, and emerging modern look of the early sixties.

With their soft color tones and candid yet carefully composed frames, these slides provide an authentic and nostalgic record of a specific time and place in mid-century American fashion history.

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George Michael Wearing a Captain’s Jacket on the Set of Wham!’s 1983 “Club Tropicana” Music Video in Ibiza

These candid photographs show George Michael on set during the filming of Wham!’s iconic “Club Tropicana” music video in the summer of 1983.

The music video was filmed on location at the famous Pikes Hotel in Ibiza, Spain. The hotel served as the perfect sunny, luxurious backdrop for the song's satirical take on package holidays and the glamorous jet-set lifestyle.

In this particular behind-the-scenes moment, Michael was playfully posing in a formal captain’s uniform jacket, complete with gold rank stripes on the sleeves, but paired with absolutely no pants, sporting just ultra-short shorts and white tube socks.

In the storyline of the “Club Tropicana” music video, he and his bandmate Andrew Ridgeley play two airline pilots on vacation. At the very end of the video, their holiday fantasy wraps up as they are shown dressing back into their pilot uniforms to head back to work.

This humorous, pantsless behind-the-scenes shot perfectly encapsulates the campy, lighthearted, and sex-positive aesthetic that defined Wham! in the early 1980s. It has since become a beloved piece of pop history and a testament to George Michael’s early status as a fearless, boundary-pushing style icon.

George Spencer Watson: Elegant Portraitist of the Late Romantic School

George Spencer Watson (1869–1934) was an English portrait painter known for his refined and romantic style, often influenced by the Italian Renaissance.

Trained at the Royal Academy Schools, Watson became a respected member of the Royal Academy and the Royal Society of Portrait Painters. He specialized in elegant portraits of women and family members, combining soft lighting, graceful poses, and a sense of quiet dignity. His works reflect the late Romantic tradition in British painting, blending technical skill with a delicate, atmospheric quality that remains admired today.

These elegant portraits showcase George Spencer Watson’s refined technique and romantic sensibility, capturing the quiet beauty and dignity of his subjects.

Four Loves I Found, a Woman, a Child, a Horse and a Hound

A Lady in Black

A Lady in White

Cynthia

Dorothy, daughter of F.J. Elliott Esq

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Historical Photos of Columbia River Log Rafts From Between the Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the Columbia River served as the central highway for the Pacific Northwest’s booming timber industry. Moving millions of board feet of massive old-growth timber from inland forests to coastal sawmills, and eventually to California’s expanding cities, required extraordinary feats of maritime engineering. What began as simple river driving evolved into giant flat log booms and, ultimately, the world-famous ocean-going Benson rafts.

In the mid-19th century, loggers floated loose timber down river tributaries. On calmer stretches of the Columbia, logs were organized into flat, single-layer floating enclosures known as log booms. Bound together with perimeter boom sticks and swifter cables, these rafts were easily towed by steam tugboats downriver to mills in Portland, Vancouver, and Astoria. However, flat booms were unsuitable for the open ocean. Rough swells easily broke the cables apart, scattering millions of board feet of valuable timber into the Pacific.

To bypass exorbitant railroad freight rates and satisfy Southern California’s massive construction boom, lumber magnate Simon Benson perfected a revolutionary ocean-going log raft in 1906. Built along the lower Columbia River (primarily near Clatskanie, Oregon, and Stella, Washington), these giant cigar-shaped rafts were designed specifically to withstand the 1,100-mile ocean voyage down the Pacific Coast to San Diego.

A massive wooden frame resembling a ship’s hull was anchored in calm river sloughs. A crane operator layered thousands of logs in an overlapping pattern (like brickwork) so no single transverse seam ran through the raft. A heavy center chain ran the length of the raft, connected to radiating circle chains that wrapped tightly around the outside perimeter. Once the cradle sides were unbolted, high tide lifted the ocean-bound raft free. Crews often stacked finished lumber, telephone poles, and shingles on the flat top deck before towing.

Between 1906 and 1941, 120 Benson rafts successfully navigated from the Columbia River to San Diego, supplying lumber for major southern California landmarks. Only 4 were ever lost or severely damaged by storm weather.

The practice came to an end due to several factors. High-profile raft fires in 1941 made insuring ocean-going log transports difficult. Prolonged saltwater exposure caused wood warping and left salt residue that damaged sawmill blades and wood-fired boilers. Railroads and modern trucking routes became cost-competitive and faster than 15-day ocean tows.

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Promotional Stills of a Young Lucille Ball as a Goldwyn Girl in “Roman Scandals” (1933)

Before she became the iconic redheaded queen of television comedy, a 22-year-old Lucille Ball made her big Hollywood breakthrough as an uncredited Goldwyn Girl in Samuel Goldwyn’s Pre-Code musical comedy Roman Scandals (1933).

Working in New York as a Hattie Carnegie fashion model (under the name Diane Belmont), Ball was chosen as one of six models brought to Los Angeles by producer Samuel Goldwyn specifically to join the troupe of chorus dancers for the Eddie Cantor vehicle.

To play the part of a Roman slave girl, Lucille Ball wore a dramatic, long blonde wig that made her nearly unrecognizable compared to her later trademark red hair. The film features intricate, massive musical numbers choreographed by the legendary Busby Berkeley. In the famous “No More Love” slave market sequence, Ball and several other dancers were chained to a wall. According to her autobiography, the women wore nothing but their long blonde wigs for the scene, which had to be filmed away from studio censors.

Ball often credited Berkeley’s notoriously rigorous rehearsals as her trial-by-fire introduction to film work, teaching her essential technical precision in front of the camera. During the grueling production, she fainted while chained up high in the set rotunda. Her breakaway chains gave way, but an extra playing a slave driver caught her before she could hit the hot studio lights.

The “Goldwyn Girls” were Samuel Goldwyn’s elite stock troupe of chorus girls, serving as a launching pad for several future stars. Alongside Ball in the movie’s cast list were other young, up-and-coming actresses like Paulette Goddard and Barbara Pepper. The exposure from this film helped Ball secure a string of subsequent 1930s film roles with RKO Radio Pictures, eventually paving her way to Hollywood royalty.

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Patricia Medina: Exotic Beauty of Classic Hollywood

Patricia Medina (1919–2012) was a British actress known for her exotic beauty and striking screen presence in Hollywood films of the 1940s and ’50s.

Born in Liverpool to a Spanish father and English mother, Medina began her career in British cinema before moving to Hollywood, where she often played glamorous and spirited leading ladies in adventure films and period dramas. She appeared opposite stars such as Louis Hayward, Alan Ladd, and Orson Welles, and later married actor Joseph Cotten.

With her dark eyes, elegant features, and distinctive European allure, Medina remains a memorable figure of classic cinema. These vintage photos beautifully capture the exotic elegance and timeless charm of Patricia Medina, a striking beauty of Hollywood’s Golden Age.

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Chromogenic Photographic Portraits of Andy Warhol by Philippe Halsman

In 1968, renowned portrait photographer Philippe Halsman photographed Andy Warhol at The Factory in New York. Among the most famous results of this session is a series of striking, dramatic studio portraits where Warhol touches or points a finger just below his eye. While black and white photogravures were distributed in the late 1960s and 1970s, the images were also printed as chromogenic color prints (C-prints). In 1989, a limited-edition portfolio of eight chromogenic prints from the 1968 session was released in an edition of 100.

Halsman used strong directional, split lighting—casting cool cyan/teal shadows across one half of Warhol’s face while illuminating the rest in warm ambient light. The dramatic close-up frames Warhol looking directly into the lens while pointing to his eye, capturing an unsettling, enigmatic vulnerability characteristic of Halsman’s psychological approach to portraiture.

Proof prints and portfolio sheets from this collaboration have been exhibited widely, including at New York's Nahan Gallery, and featured across major editorial publications including Life magazine.