10 posts tagged with SocialHistory. (View popular tags)
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His photographs recorded life along the Scotswood Road, the working class district in the West End of Newcastle made famous in Geordie song. James (Jimmy) Forsyth had come to make his home there having volunteered for war work as a fitter in one of the local factories, moving up to Newcastle from his native South Wales. In 1954, aware that change was coming and no longer working having lost an eye in an industrial accident, Forsyth began to document his community and surroundings. A self-taught photographer, Jimmy "picked up a cheap folding camera in one of the pawn shops. There wasn’t much to adjust, just as well, because I’ve never known what to do...I’m just an amateur...just capturing what I knew was going to disappear." Jimmy died last Saturday, aged 95.
posted by Abiezer
on Jul 14, 2009 -
11 comments
Two galleries of photos of China in 1957 and 1978 by Robert Carl Cohen, "the first American to film China since the 1949 Communist victory." My personal favourite set is these street scenes from 1957, but Cohen captured a diverse range of images from Chinese lives. His (? I presume) site Radical Images has plenty of other interesting stuff too.
posted by Abiezer
on Mar 29, 2009 -
14 comments
Worktown Between 1937 and 1938 Humphrey Spender took over 900 pictures of Bolton as part of the Mass Observation [Previously] project. Spender's "Worktown" photographs offer a fascinating insight into the lives of ordinary people living and working in a British pre-War industrial town.
posted by Abiezer
on Feb 1, 2009 -
16 comments
Behind The Rent Strike [YouTube playlist; six parts of 50ish min. documentary] Nick Broomfield's graduation piece, a documentary on the 14-month rent strike by the people of Kirkby New Town, near Liverpool, which began in late 1973 in response (it wasn't the only one) to the Heath government's Housing Finance Act. Broomfield gets plenty of insight from local people and examines the social conditions behind the events. Great viewing of good film-making and an opportunity for a bit of nostalgia if you're a viewer from round that way.
posted by Abiezer
on Jan 26, 2009 -
8 comments
Kamal Chunchie charts the history of the black and Asian community in Canning Town, east London, in the 1920s and 1930s. It tells the story of the Coloured Men's Institute and its founder, Kamal Chunchie, a man who can rightly be called east London's first black and Asian community leader. One of the many excellent East London history projects at Hidden Histories.
posted by Abiezer
on Jan 16, 2009 -
2 comments
Drawing from 175 digital collections and growing, American Social History Online pulls together primary sources documenting our past as a people. A project of the Digital Library Federation. [more inside]
posted by Rykey
on Dec 22, 2008 -
9 comments
Last Days of the Old North (of England). A fascinating selection of photographs - mostly from the late sixties/early seventies documenting an era when it truly was grim up north. Made all the more interesting by the erudite and comprehensive commentary by the photographer.
posted by idiomatika
on Aug 26, 2008 -
36 comments
The racial and sexual history of the American public swimming pool.
posted by Jasper Friendly Bear
on Jul 11, 2007 -
50 comments
Christopher Hitchens, grumpy political type, on the blow job.
posted by Arthur "Two Sheds" Jackson
on Jun 7, 2006 -
64 comments
Welcome to the Blackout History Project. With all the hub-bub today, josh m. marshall of talkingpointsmemo posted a link to an associates history of two other nyc blackouts. marshall says:
