VINTAGE NEW YORK, 1935 Photograph by Berenice Abbott In this historic gem we see the Manhattan skyline from the Fulton Street Dock (which I believe is Pier 17 or close nearby). The photograph was taken by Bernice Abbot on November 26, 1935. This is one of the hundreds of black and white…
With over 17,000 historic photos on Flickr, the Library of Congress is a treasure trove for vintage awesomeness. Not only do the fine people at the LOC share an amazing archive for the world to enjoy, but they also categorize and tag many of the images, helping others sort through their extensive collections. One…
In 1989, following in the footsteps of Robert Frank’s The Americans, Michael Galinksy of Rumur.com drove across the country and documented malls across America. Armed with a cheap Nikon FG-20 and an even cheaper lens. Galinsky shot about 30 rolls of slide film in malls from Long Island to North Dakota to Seattle. The…
Prohibition in the United States was a national ban on the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol, in place from 1920 to 1933. The ban was mandated by the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution, and the Volstead Act set down the rules for enforcing the ban and defined the types of alcoholic beverages that…
From its completion in 1931 until construction of the World Trade Center’s North Tower in 1972, the Empire State Building stood as the tallest building in the world. As of 2012, it is the 15th tallest skyscraper in the world and the fourth tallest free standing structure in the Americas. At 102 floors and…
In 1907, German apothecary Julius Neubronner invented an aerial photography technique known as pigeon photography. By affixing a lightweight time-delayed miniature camera to an aluminium breast harness, Neubronner attached his design to homing pigeons who would then be able to capture aerial photographs during their flight. Below you will find a brief history…
The Historic Houses Trust in Australia has a forensic photography archive at the Justice & Police Museum which contains an estimated 130,000 images created by the New South Wales Police between 1910 and 1960. The Sifter has already featured a vintage collection of mugshots from this archive of both male and female criminals. Below…
The Edward S. Curtis Collection offers a unique glimpse into Curtis’s work with indigenous cultures. The more than 2,400 silver-gelatin photographic prints were acquired by the Library of Congress through copyright deposit from about 1900 through 1930. About two-thirds (1,608) of these images were not published in Curtis’s multi-volume work, The North American…
Photograph by Ansel Adams via The Library of Congress Manzanar (which means ‘apple orchard’ in Spanish), is the site of one of ten camps where over 110,000 Japanese Americans were imprisoned during World War II. Located at the foot of the Sierra Nevada in California’s Owens Valley between the towns of Lone Pine…
It’s February, 1942. US Navy Monitors have just tracked a Japanese submarine skulking just outside of San Francisco. A few nights later, a Japanese submarine surfaces off the coast of Santa Barbara and fires a few shells at an oil storage facility. With the memories of Pearl Harbor from last December still fresh,…
Page 16 of 17
Sign up to get our BEST stories of the week straight to your inbox.
