George S. Zimbel is a documentary photographer. [more inside]
posted by chunking express on Oct 21, 2009 - 7 comments

Brenda Kenneally documents the effects of illegal drugs in her Brooklyn, New York neighborhood. Money Power Respect and Big Trigg. NSFW [previous comment]
posted by tellurian on Sep 15, 2009 - 29 comments

Richard Renaldi is doing some pretty wonderful photography. For several years, he’s been using a large format 8x10 camera (with the hood and everything), profiling people in ways that feel both intimate and authentic. His first book, “Figure and Ground,” is a collection of portraits and landscapes that capture, with a quiet intensity, a diverse cross-section of the country. His newest book, “Fall River Boys,” is a sort of chronicle of a decaying American town, and the (mostly) young inhabitants who are either unable or unwilling to leave. (He and his partner even launched their own press to get it published.) [more inside]
posted by mapalm on Apr 13, 2009 - 8 comments

14 large color photos from the Farm Security Administration. [more inside]
posted by Happy Dave on Mar 13, 2009 - 32 comments

"These photographs of McClellan Street by David and Peter Turnley, taken in 1972-73, help us understand how America came to be the country that it is today." — John G. Morris
posted by chunking express on Mar 15, 2008 - 17 comments

African-American Snapshots & Portraits (page is slow to load) (previously) (via).
posted by JPowers on Feb 4, 2008 - 6 comments

Pictures from hitchhiking across America. {via}
posted by dobbs on Nov 29, 2007 - 29 comments

Excellent post over at BLDBLOG on the history of Bannerman's Arsenal, a ruined island castle in the middle of the Hudson river, created by a war profiteer who was at one time the world's largest arms dealer. Bonus points for the amazing accompanying photos by Shaun O'Boyle, whose site Modern Ruins has been featured on the blue previously.
posted by jonson on Nov 17, 2007 - 14 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

Kodachrome color photographs of American life, dating from the 1930s, 40s, & 50s. Selections via DailyKos.
posted by ijoshua on Dec 7, 2006 - 12 comments

"Then my photography started to shift; everything had to be very clean and Republican, straight and perfect... Everything is staged and controlled... It's the complete opposite of war photography."
War photographer Christopher Morris's new exhibit and book: "My America".
posted by matteo on Sep 27, 2006 - 20 comments

Images of Atlantic City Boardwalk from R.C. Maxwell. Photographs taken to give client's an idea of the traffic that would see their billboards, provide a record of the people who have thronged to the boardwalk since the early 1900's.
posted by tellurian on Sep 13, 2006 - 8 comments

Memento Mori : both in Europe and The United States, post-mortem photography [pdf] was both reminder of and coping mechanism for death in the 19th century.
posted by grapefruitmoon on Jun 8, 2006 - 11 comments

Robert Gregory Griffeth has deleted all of his galleries and in their place has posted these 12 enigmatic panels and a tracker (which, if accurate, tells me that there are a couple of hundred puzzled punters a day). [more inside]
posted by tellurian on Apr 11, 2006 - 15 comments

PictureHistory - a source of American historical photographs
posted by Gyan on Oct 5, 2005 - 6 comments

Little visual miracles. For more than forty years that most American of photographers, Chevalier in the Order of Arts and Letters Lee Friedlander, has recorded modern American urban life -- with its jumble of people, signs, buildings, and cars, and television sets. He likes to turn a common blunder of amateurs -- photographing something nearby with one's back to the sun -- into a leitmotif. His shadow plays the role of alter ego, sticking to the back of a woman's fur collar, clinging to a lamppost as a parade of drum majorettes passes by, reclining like a stuffed doll on a chair. Clever jigsaw puzzles, his pictures frequently reveal themselves to be laconic, austere poems to what Friedlander has termed "the American social landscape',' meaning mostly ordinary places and affairs. "Friedlander," an exhibition of more than 480 photographs and 25 books covering decades of work, runs at MoMA through Aug. 29, before traveling to Europe until 2007. More inside.
posted by matteo on Jun 14, 2005 - 8 comments

Images of the American Civil War
posted by matteo on May 20, 2005 - 23 comments

American Photographs: The Road "In 1935, the collaborative satirical writers Ilya Ilf (1897-1937) and Evgeny Petrov (1903-1942) traveled to the United States from the Soviet Union on assignment as special correspondents for the newspaper Pravda. Shortly after their arrival in New York aboard the French luxury liner Normandie, they purchased a Ford automobile and embarked upon a ten-week road trip to California and back."
posted by todd on Jan 1, 2005 - 25 comments

Mike Disfarmer had a photo studio in the resort town of Heber Springs, Arkansas throughout the 30s and 40s, creating images with an amazing blunt, unvarnished beauty and strength. Nothing speaks more eloquently about Disfarmer's artistry than the photographs themselves. His genius was the ability to capture without judgment, the essence of a people and a time.
posted by amberglow on Apr 11, 2004 - 11 comments

US National Archives & Records Administration Exhibit Hall. Some good American history pieces - the Emancipation Proclamation, government drawings, 20th century photographs, the New Deal and the arts, panoramic photography, 1970s Chicago, World War 2 posters, gifts to presidents, and more.
posted by plep on Jul 3, 2003 - 4 comments

Unseen America. First person photographs by low income people. Via Bread and Roses, a cultural resource for the labour movement in the New York area.
posted by plep on Jun 5, 2003 - 5 comments

America 24/7. Well, you've got to figure they'll reject way more photos than they'll accept, but I for one am looking forward to the opportunity to be included in one of those fancy thick "A Day In The Life" coffee table books. The project starts on Monday and only lasts for seven days, so make sure to take some time out of MatrixWeek to look at the world around you -- in all it's mundane glory -- and click, click, click away.
posted by RKB on May 7, 2003 - 4 comments

When you drive across America, you may or may not want to take a picture at every mile marker, but be sure to stay at vintage motels, eat at classic diners, and, above all, visit historic mental institutions. (Then thank the site with the Interesting Ideas.)
posted by liam on Mar 30, 2002 - 14 comments

Vanishing America. While doing some research on the "neon graveyard" in Las Vegas, I ran into this site which seeks to "discover, procure, document and preserve through photographic media the architecture and cultural landscapes situated along the highways of the U.S." While I wish that the gallery had more entries, the links section is a real gem. How else would you find out about stuckonstuckeys.com or The grotto of the redemption?
posted by machaus on Dec 28, 2001 - 8 comments

Oh so spooky (In a Disney sort of way) The main page is annoying if you dislike applets but this site explores Disney's Haunted Mansion with an obsessive zeal. Of course there *is* all sorts of cool stuff going on behind the scenes. Like the guy who broke his neck . . .

(And who knew the ride seats were called doombuggies a.k.a "omnimovers", and that they are patented?)
posted by jeremias on Oct 31, 2001 - 10 comments