MetaFilter posts tagged with History and photographs

Streets of Pompeii

sio42 — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 06:44:12 -0800

Ancient Pompeii Ruins now on Google Street View Today on Morning Edition I head this story. The Italian government has allowed the ruins of Pompeii to be photographed for Google Street View. It's very cool. (SLGM)

No Lounld Music

netbros — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 15:33:33 -0800

As patrons begin to fill a room decorated with toy monkeys, beer posters and a silver disco ball, Mr. Seaberry emerges in a startling suit of red with white pinstripes and a snazzy white hat, and smoking a cheroot. “Po’ Monkey is all anybody ever called me since I was little,” he said. “I don’t know why, except I was poor for sure.” Transformed in the 1950s from a sharecropper shack that was built probably in the 1920s, Poor Monkey's Lounge is one of the last rural juke joints along The Trail of the Hellhound on the Mississippi Delta. Photographs of Po' Monkeys and other Delta Blues History Blues, Booze, & BBQ by Michael Loyd Young Po' Monkey's Juke Joint Flickr group American Music by Annie Liebovitz Early blues musicians you might hear covered at Po' Monkey's Juke Joint. [be sure to click the sound icon to the left of each name for sample music] Son House's place, not only in the history of Delta blues, but in the overall history of the music, is a very high one indeed. He was a major innovator of the Delta style, along with his playing partners Charley Patton and Willie Brown. No blues singer ever presented a more gentle, genial image than Mississippi John Hurt. A guitarist with an extraordinarily lyrical and refined fingerpicking style, he also sang with a warmth unique in the field of blues, and the gospel influence in his music gave it a depth and reflective quality unusual in the field. No two ways about it, the most influential slide guitarist of the postwar period was Elmore James, hands down. Although his early demise from heart failure kept him from enjoying the fruits of the '60s blues revival as his contemporaries Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf did, James left a wide influential trail behind him. Among the earliest and most influential Delta bluesmen to record, Skip James was the best known proponent of the so-called Bentonia school of blues players, a genre strain invested with as much fanciful scholarly "research" as any. If the Delta country blues has a convenient source point, it would probably be Charley Patton, its first great star. His hoarse, impassioned singing style, fluid guitar playing, and unrelenting beat made him the original king of the Delta blues. Like many of his contemporaries on the Chicago circuit, Muddy Waters was a product of the fertile Mississippi Delta. From the late '40s on, he eloquently defined the city's aggressive, swaggering, Delta-rooted sound with his declamatory vocals and piercing slide guitar attack.

History of War and Peace Collection

Rumple — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 12:03:01 -0800

Peace and War in the 20th Century is an ambitious, in progress, massive assemblage of posters, photographs, propaganda, ephemera, letters, diaries, paintings, sketches, stories, letters, music and related items, from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. The collection is international in scope. Some of the nodes lack content, and the navigation is a little confusing, so the jump I list some of my favourite case studies from their site. Note: Many of the images are reasonable resolution if you right click and open in a new tab rather than only view in the pop-forward window. Also scroll down for thumbnails of additional material. The advanced search option is very useful as it includes a detailed site map. Representing War: Posters, Art and Music. Many of the posters are unusual and new to me, such as 'Save Waste Bones - They Make Glue for Aircraft', 'Boys, Come Along, You're Wanted', and this beautiful poster of the Earth and Doves. Concentration Camp correspondence Sir Norman Angell: a lifelong proponent of peace (many images of his pamphlets and posters) The Spanish Civil War: Foreign Intervention, American Reaction. Includes evocative pamphlets, leaflets, and posters. Waging War London prepares for World War II: a great selection of instructional and civil defence materials such as posters and memos. Britain prepares for World War I: some diary pages of Adrian Duff. William Frank Kenwood, Canadian Pilot and Prisoner of War, including newspaper clippings, a letter from the Red Cross, telegrams, etc. Vera Brittain's diaries and pamphlets Canadian Women's Roles in World War I: anything new in war work? Mapping and Photographing World War I: interesting instructional materials, etc. The Nuclear Disarmament Movement, which includes a great collection of very striking posters and leaflets. Evolving Technology in World War I, which includes numerous artistic visions of machine guns, tanks, etc. War Resisters, including pamphlets. World War 1 in the Middle East I like this typed report of a raid. I also like this leaflet against War Toys. As I noted, there is a huge amount of great stuff at this site, interspersed with some dead ends as one would expect from a work in progress.

Disappearing Places

katillathehun — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 14:45:17 -0800

"I remember having rootbeer floats on the porch swing on hot summer nights... I remember playing with my cousins and the neighbors in the side yard. I remember running to the train tracks just a few blocks away and counting the train cars (sometimes over 100!) as they streamed by. I remember 'Uncle' Bill showing me his missing finger that he lost while working the trains... This is someone else’s house now but my memories still live there." From Disappearing Places: An archive and collective map of places that no longer exist, at least not as they once did. More disappearing and changed places.

Chicago Daily News Photos 1902-1933

winna — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 16:26:48 -0800

Man walks on water from the archives of the Chicago Daily News. During the Progressive Era conservation and environmental concerns became increasingly important thanks to pictures like the one above. It's important to note that in many ways conservation in this context meant conservation for use, not protection from development. A good example of the debate over this definition of conservation was the still-ongoing controversy over the Hetch Hetchy Valley reservoir. The Hetch Hetchy Valley struggle was John Muir's last battle for conservation in the way we now understand it. (previously) The provision of the 1910 Picket Act which confirmed the right of government to sell or utilize public lands based on the determined utility of that land was a key factor in the Teapot Dome scandal. And incidentally, Bubbly Creek, the photo in the first link, is still contaminated.

browsable peeks into the British past

nickyskye — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 17:37:11 -0800

Odeon cinemas l Domestic service in Victorian and Edwardian England l English house and brickwork l Merchant Palaces l Stonehenge: presentation and interpretation are among dozens of Photo Essays on ViewFinder: A browsable picture library of historic images from The National Monuments Record at English Heritage. Many of the photo essays have links at the end to other related sites, like at the end of William Morris and the Arts & Crafts Movement.

Historical Photographs of China

peacay — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 10:23:32 -0800

The Sidney D Gamble Photograph Collection at Duke University consists of about 5,000 newly digitised pictures, taken predominantly in China between 1917 and 1932. Browse by subject, category or location tags. Photos taken in 1908 are to be added in the future. [via]

In the flash of a click

hadjiboy — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 07:42:01 -0800

The Power of Photography (might or might not be NSFW) with accompanying articles: Stricken Child crawling towards a Food Camp [1994] | The Falling Man [2001] | The Youngest Mother [1939] | Born Twice [1999] (via)

witness the strangest customs of the red, white, brown, black and yellow races ... attend their startling rites, their mysterious practices ... all assembled for you

anastasiav — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 07:41:40 -0800

The Secret Museum of Mankind :: "Published in 1935, the Secret Museum is a mystery book. It has no author or credits, no copyright, no date, no page numbers, no index ... The tone of the commentary is dated, and uniformly racist in the extreme, often hilariously so. It reads like the patter of a carnival sideshow barker, from a time when the world was divided between "modern" Europeans and "savages" ... Presented here is the Secret Museum in its entirety, all 564 pages scanned and transcribed-- nothing is omitted or censored ... Treat it as entertainment instead of education (don't take it seriously and don't believe a word it says!), adjust for the blatant racial bias of the time, and enjoy."

vintage images of the Far East and Asia

nickyskye — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 13:05:39 -0800

Images of Asia l India then and now video l Historical Chinese Postcard Project: 1896 - 1920.

Photographs of American Cities

jonson — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 09:43:34 -0800

Photographs of American Cities from the middle of the 20th Century.

Deja View: Historic landscape "rephotos" (1800s, 1970s, 1990s)

taz — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 06:15:41 -0800

The Third View project is a fascinating presentation of "rephotographs" of over 100 historic landscape sites in the American West that presents original 19th-century survey photographs, photographed again in the 1970s, then once again in the '90s - from the original vantage points, under similar lighting conditions, at (roughly) the same time of day and year. [Flash, and you'll probably need to allow pop-ups; a little more info inside...]

Historic maps and photos of Africa

Rumple — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 18:26:14 -0800

Northwestern University hosts a fine collection of historic East African photographs, viewable as sample sets or in their original photo-albums (requires flash). But the real prize is their wonderful collection of 113 historic maps of Africa, which are zoomable to incredible detail, also 1, 2, 3. via

Japanese historical photographs ca. 1910

Rumple — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 14:43:16 -0800

A nice set of photographic glass-plate transparencies depicting life in Japan ca. 1910. These "Yokohama photographs" were sold to foreign tourists between about 1868 and 1912. I found the Crafts and Trades section most interesting.

Old Pictures

Mblue — Sun, 06 May 2007 16:56:48 -0800

Time travel exists. It's called old pictures.

'To an Eastern man this city is full of surprises. '

anastasiav — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 12:17:36 -0800

Ghost Cowboy :: True Tales of Adventure in the American West

The Ted Kierscey Collection

Gator — Thu, 23 Mar 2006 11:15:33 -0800

The Narrow Gauge Circle hosts, among other fine features, the Ted Kierscey Collection -- page after page after page of historical photographs of Colorado's railroad and mining towns.

Images of the American Civil War

matteo — Fri, 20 May 2005 07:23:54 -0800

Images of the American Civil War

My favorite government agency

the Real Dan — Thu, 14 Apr 2005 12:27:47 -0800

More than 16,000 photos related to the USGS from the years 1868 through 1992 are now available online where they may be easily searched, viewed, and downloaded free of charge. These are old stereo pairs, sites drowned by dams, geologists and surveyers in horse drawn wagons, petroglyphs, national parks, Mount St. Helens, John Wesley Powell, hoodoos, arches, ruins, mines...

Penny Postcards

y2karl — Sun, 19 Dec 2004 13:56:56 -0800

OK, Seattleites, see the American flag here ? On the sidewalk below is where your 3rd & Pine McDonalds now sits. Man, I can see five buildings here that are still standing, but that red brick one at the lower right got replaced early. Now here's the Northern Life Tower. Note how the bricks lighten towards the top, so as to make it look taller from below--very subtle, that. It's one of Seattle's two Art Deco buildings, the other being the Exchange Building. You can cut through that one, coming off the ferry at First Avenue and take the elevator to walk out on Second Ave rather than climb that steep hill, you know.
And consider on what playground equipment our grandparents got to play. Lucky stiffs--you can't even find a decent 50s era swing set in a park in this town anymore. Penny Postcards From King County, from Penny Postcards of Washington, from Penny Postcards. Man, I loves me some vintage postcards. And if you do, too, check that last link--it's got all 50 states.

Bystanders to History

PrinceValium — Wed, 07 Apr 2004 12:08:30 -0800

I saw a feature on ESPN last night about Britt Gaston and Cliff Courtney, two Georgia teenagers who are indelibly linked to history as the kids who ran alongside Hank Aaron after the famous 715th home run. Then I googled around a bit and discovered Jim Leavelle, the former Dallas cop who will forever be known as the guy in the hat watching Ruby take care of Oswald in the precinct basement. And then there's Mary Ann Vecchio, a 14-year-old runaway who was photographed wailing over a dead body at Kent State in 1970. And, of course, there's Afghanistan Girl. Can anyone think of other bystanders to historical events whose faces we all know but identities remain anonymous? Is there anyone who has not yet been rediscovered?

Beck Isle Museum

plep — Thu, 27 Nov 2003 04:13:37 -0800

The Beck Isle Museum , Pickering, North Yorkshire, chronicles rural Yorkshire life of the last 200 years. The collection of photographs by Sidney Smith is good. Via Museophile's museums around the UK links page.

This Land Is Your Land

briank — Wed, 12 Nov 2003 10:19:25 -0800

Vanished America If you've ever wondered what to do with all of your old vacation photos and slides, wonder no more. A fellow named Charles Cushman bequeathed his collection of over 14,000 slides and photos taken over a period of three decades, from 1938 to 1969, to Indiana Univiersity. IU has decided to create an amazing digital archive of his photos as a history project. The photos are nothing special in themselves. He took countless pictures of things he and his wife saw as they took driving tours across the United States, mostly near their home in Chicago and in the West. They are no different than and no better than anybody else's amateur photos. But, as the director of the project points out, without realizing it, Cushman captured an America already beginning to disappear in the middle of the 20th century, and did so by documenting its disappearance unwittingly over a thirty-year period. I lightly perused the slide show of 120 images and the photos are indeed both banal and compelling all at the same time. A very nicely done site with a lot of rich material. (via The Cartoonist)

Benedicte Wrensted

plep — Mon, 01 Sep 2003 10:11:19 -0800

Benedicte Wrensted: An Idaho Photographer in Focus.

Staffordshire

plep — Mon, 25 Aug 2003 12:36:56 -0800

Staffordshire Past Track. History and images of an English Midlands county : old photographs and online exhibitions on historic churches, celebrations, birth, death, serial killers and mining (and the 1984-85 strike).
Related sites :- the Museums of the Potteries, the area around Stoke-on-Trent which played a major role in the Industrial Revolution; thepotteries.org, including postcards and photographs; In Search of Agenoria, black and white photographs of the post-industrial Black Country landscape; A Miner's Son- more mining history in the Midlands (with more on the 1984-85 strike, possibly the most divisive political event in recent British history); save Bethesda Chapel, a historic Methodist chapel in Stoke; panoramic views and history of Lichfield Cathedral and other Staffordshire places.