PhotosNormandie is a collaborative collection of more than 3,000
royalty-free photos from World War II's Battle of Normandy and its aftermath. (Photos date from June 6 to late August 1944). The main link goes to the photostream. You can also peruse
sets, which include 2700+ images from the
US and
Canadian National Archives.
posted by zarq
on Mar 19, 2013 -
12 comments
In the Shadow of Wounded Knee. Along the southwestern border of South Dakota is one of the most poverty-stricken places in the United States—the Pine Ridge Reservation, home of the Oglala Lakota people. After 150 years of broken promises, they are still nurturing their tribal customs, language and beliefs.
Via [more inside]
posted by zarq
on Oct 25, 2012 -
32 comments
Epic Gallery: 150 Years Of Lesbians And Other Lady-Loving-Ladies (Some pics slightly NSFW)
"Honestly before tumblr it was difficult to find very much lesbian imagery at all online — it was always the same ten or twelve stock photos — let alone pictures of lesbians taken prior to 2000. I wanted to see an evolution of our community, how we'd grown and changed over the years — and not just in a montage of famous out actresses and models, but pictures of actual people, pictures of women who were active in the community — regular human beings, writers and social activists."
posted by ColdChef
on Sep 19, 2012 -
47 comments
SF conventions, and snapshots of SF conventions, go back a long time. Here's
Midwestcon 2, put on by the Cincinnati Fantasy group in June 1951; shots include
a haunting image of Henry Burwell, publisher of Atlanta zine
Science Fiction Digest, and an already-old
E.E. "Doc" Smith. From Retronaut,
an unnamed 1980 con in LA. From the Mills photo archive,
con costumes from the late 60s through the 80s. Forrest Ackerman, editor of
Famous Monsters of Filmland,
in "futuristic costume" at the first WorldCon in 1939. This last from the endless compendium that is the
MidAmerican Fan Photo Archive.
posted by escabeche
on Aug 1, 2012 -
19 comments
Fenway Park, in Boston, is a lyric little bandbox of a ballpark. Everything is painted green and seems in curiously sharp focus, like the inside of an old-fashioned peeping-type Easter egg. It was built in 1912 and rebuilt in 1934, and offers, as do most Boston artifacts, a compromise between Man's Euclidean determinations and Nature's beguiling irregularities.
So wrote John Updike in his
moving tribute to Red Sox legend Ted Williams -- an appropriately pedigreed account for this
oldest and
most fabled of ballfields that saw
its first major league game played
one century ago today.
As a team
in flux hopes to recapture the magic with an
old-school face-off against the New York
Highlanders Yankees, it's hard to imagine the soul of the Sox faced the
specter of
demolition not too long ago. Now
legally preserved, in a sport crowded with corporate-branded superdome behemoths,
Fenway abides, bursting with
history,
idiosyncrasy,
record crowds, and occasional
song.
[more inside]
posted by Rhaomi
on Apr 20, 2012 -
48 comments
The history of Toronto in photos is 90 some odd posts linked to provide a thematically organized visual overview. The vast majority of the photographs featured derive from the Toronto Archives. Should you be interested in a less visually oriented take on Toronto history, there is also the
Nostalgia Tripping series, which was designed to be a bit more about storytelling than just the photos.
posted by netbros
on Dec 5, 2011 -
20 comments
Beautiful Type is a patchwork of photos and illustrations having a relationship with typography.
AisleOne is focused on graphic design, typography, grid systems, minimalism and modernism.
iABC is a collection of beautiful letters.
Inspiration Bit has a nice archive of articles about web typography.
Nicetype is about fonts, logos, posters and software.
Twenty-Six Types celebrates the beautiful letters.
Typenuts is type-themed iPhone and desktop wallpapers.
Typoretum is about typography, letterpress and printing history. Enjoy.
posted by netbros
on Nov 6, 2011 -
5 comments
Robert F. Gallagher served in the United States Army's 815th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Battalion (Third Army) in the European Theater during WWII. He has posted his memoir online:
"Scratch One Messerschmitt," told from numerous photos he took during the war and the detailed notes he made shortly afterwards.
[more inside]
posted by zarq
on Nov 23, 2010 -
7 comments
Historypin uses Google Maps and Street View technology and hopes to become the largest user-generated archive of the world's historical images and stories. Historypin lets you layer old images onto modern Street View scenes, giving a series of peaks into the past. Upload and pin your own old photos, as well as the stories behind them, onto the map.
posted by dobbs
on Jun 29, 2010 -
20 comments
Once Upon a Time in Afghanistan. "It is important to know that disorder, terrorism, and violence against schools that educate girls are not inevitable. I want to show Afghanistan's youth of today how their parents and grandparents really lived."
posted by availablelight
on Jun 3, 2010 -
8 comments
"
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 inside]
posted by katillathehun
on Dec 10, 2008 -
23 comments
A few hundred photos of Afghanistan by a Canadian photographer. Some from the 1970s, some since 2000. Just a reminder there's more to the country than a testing ground for military technology and terrorist tactics. Some beautiful images and some scenes of everyday life. Accompanied by the photographer's personal commentary.
posted by binturong
on Aug 13, 2008 -
14 comments
The first drive-in movie theater was opened on June 6, 1933, by salesman Richard M. Hollingshead in Camden, N.J. On the bill was a twilight showing of the British comedy
Wife Beware. And so the drive-in era was born, peaking in 1958 with almost 5,000 theaters in the U.S alone. These days you'd be hard pressed trying to find one but thankfully there are plenty of
handy lists online telling you just where to find one (
there's even one for Aussies like me!). And that's not all we have to be thankful for;
the drive-in scene is apparently witnessing something of a "mini-revival" at present. Don't feel like going out? Then why not make your own? First
you'll need instructions on how to build one. Then you'll need intermission-advertisements (
you can download or even just watch heaps of them for free here). And then you'll need
a handy list of the kinds of films they used to show at the drive-in. If you're in the US, you'll need to know some of the
special rules the FCC has for drive-ins, and if you have any more questions, I'm sure the fine folk at the
United Drive-In Theater Owners Association could help. All of this sound like too much work? Then just sit back and check out the videos and photos on
this nice site (it's about drive-ins, of course!).
posted by Effigy2000
on Feb 18, 2008 -
43 comments
From about 1875 to the 1940s,
cigarette cards spurred tobacco sales. Sets offer a glimpse into the popculture of the times, spanning
newsmakers,
cinema celebrities, and
sports stars; cute illustrated subjects, like
"frisky" and
children with rosy cheeks; handy info like
air raid precautions,
first aid, and
amusing tricks; and neat stuff like
famous escapes,
exotic races, and
figures of speech. Browse
more fun sets of vintage images.
posted by madamjujujive
on Dec 11, 2007 -
21 comments
The great Seattle Fire.
"The spring of 1889 in Seattle had been beautiful....Unfortunately, the unusually good weather proved to be disastrous, as the dry conditions conspired with a handful of other elements to allow for the worst fire in city history...the fire burned until 3:00 am. When it was done, the damage was enormous. 120 acres (25 city blocks) had been destroyed, as was every wharf and Mill from Union to Jackson Streets. Although the loss of human life was evidently low (no statistics were kept on that) it was estimated that 1 million rats were killed...." Photo gallery. A roughly contemporaneous
account. A Historylink
essay on the fire. How the fire
changed Seattle's architecture.
posted by dersins
on Nov 7, 2007 -
8 comments
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...]
posted by taz
on Jun 15, 2007 -
13 comments
