historical

Fascinating Slideshow of Gang Members Throughout History

As the reader who send this video in to us said, "Buzzfeed isn't the normal source of photo interest stories." Case in point, the top photo-related article on BuzzFeed's home page as of this writing is, "19 Celebrity Prom Photos That Are Actually Super Adorable."

The video above, however, is a wonderful breath-of-fresh-air exception to the BuzzFeed rule.

My Photo Archiving Find Of A Lifetime

A big thank you to Mosaic for sending us this article! We hope you enjoy this amazing story!

One day in the spring of 1975, my phone rang, and that call led me on an incredible journey. The call was from my brother, who was starting his career as an art researcher and historian. He specializes on forgotten or overlooked American artists.

“Do you remember me telling you about the research I am doing on Alfred Waud, the Civil War artist”, he says, “well, I have tracked down his present day descendants living in Vermont. I visited them the other day and you won’t believe what I found. I need your expertise. We need to go back to Vermont right away. I’m not going say more. You’ll see for yourself.”

The Most Honored Photograph

Doesn’t look like much, does it? But, depending upon your definition, this photograph, a team effort by 9 men, is the most honored picture in U. S. History. If you want to find out about it, read on. It’s an interesting tale about how people sometimes rise beyond all expectations.

Does This Photo Show an Iconic Photo In the Making?

Gizmodo writer Attila Nagy was browsing through the Boston Public Library's Flickr stream recently when the above photograph by Leslie Jones caught his eye. He noticed that the scene in the background looked strangely similar to another, much more iconic, photo: "Night View, New York" by Berenice Abbott.

That got him wondering: could the figure seen in the foreground of the photograph actually be Berenice Abbott on the night she made her famous image?

The first ever photo, showing a rooftop view, by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce

The First Photo: Nicéphore Niépce’s ‘View from the Window at Le Gras’

It has been over half a century since Swiss photo historian Helmut Gernsheim donated the world’s earliest permanent photograph* to the University of Texas for public display in 1963. This article is a look at the story behind Nicéphore Niépce's View from the Window at Le Gras, the world's oldest known photograph captured with a camera.

Why Didn’t People Smile in Old Photos?

Ever wonder why people in old paintings and photographs generally don't have smiles on their faces? We explored this subject a little back in November 2012, and found that reasons may have included technical limitations, oral hygiene, and the seriousness of formal occasions.

Over at the Public Domain Review, Nicholas Jeeves has written up an in-depth piece on this subject that comes to some different conclusions.

Colorizing Photoshoppers Put a New Spin on Old Historical Photos

There's an awesome little subreddit that has been getting a lot of press coverage as of late. It's called ColorizedHistory, and is a 20,000+ person strong community of "Amateur Historians" who are interested in the idea of creating high quality colorized versions of historical black-and-white photographs.

Then-and-Now Photos of New York City

NYC Grid is a website run by Paul Sahner that explores and documents New York neighborhoods, "street by street and block by block." One of the awesome reoccurring features on the blog is the before-and-after section, which features pairs of photos showing identical locations but shot decades -- or sometimes over a century -- apart.

WWII Prisoners Built Improvised Cameras to Document Their Lives

Ever since photography was invented in the 1800s, there have been people willing to risk life and limb to bring images to the public eye. Among the craziest examples are prisoners of war during World War II -- people who built makeshift cameras out of smuggled parts in order to capture what life was like inside their prison camps.

Archives of Influential Early Photographer Fox Talbot Get New Lease on Life

A British group working to preserve the work of influential 19th-century photographer William Henry Fox Talbot has discovered previously unseen work by the innovator.

A project led by Oxford University's Bodleian Libraries has been working to preserve the largest extant pivate collection of Talbot's work since family members revealed last year that they were working with a New York dealer who could sell key works to private collectors.

Wedding Tintype Portraits with a Massive 20×24 1800’s Camera

When my wife Sara and I finally decided to start planning our wedding (after a crazy Muppet Proposal proposal that seemed to tickle quite a few people's fancy) one thing that became very important to us was what to do with our wedding portraits/photography.

We are both photographers. Sara and I have experience in handmade processes (Sara is heavily into large format pinhole photography and albumen printing), and after the proposal thing went viral we had all kinds of photographers contacting us pushing their services in our face.

What an Atomic Bomb Explosion Looks Like from Above and Below

On November 5, 1951, a 31 kiloton atomic bomb was dropped in the Nevada Test Site from a B-45 Tornado bomber. A camera in the air was documenting the test, and captured the video above showing what a large nuclear explosion looks like when looking down at it from above. Notice how the camera begins to shake when the shockwave of the blast reaches it.

This Zoomable Composite Aerial Photo of San Francisco is Like a 1938 Google Earth

What you see above is an ultra-high resolution aerial photograph of San Francisco as it looked in 1938. The David Rumsey Historical Map Collection put the image together using 164 large format black-and-white photos of SF that were shot in 1938. When viewed through a zoomable image viewer, the composite photo is pretty much a 1938 version of Google Earth's satellite view.

The Story Behind the Iconic “Tank Man” Tiananmen Square Photo

When the Chinese military moved into Beijing's Tiananmen Square on June 5, 1989 to forcibly remove pro-democracy protestors, an anonymous man famously decided to place himself in front of the long column of Chinese tanks that were rumbling into the area. Photos and videos of the incident were immediately published and broadcast around the world. AP photographer Jeff Widener's "Tank Man" photo, shown above, is widely considered to be one of the most iconic photos of the 20th century.

Old Color Footage Shows What London Looked Like Back in 1926

Want to see what London looked like back in the year 1926? Check out this beautiful color footage shot in various London locations by Claude Friese-Greene, an early British pioneer of film. Frisse-Greene created a series of travelogues nearly 90 years ago using a color process developed by his father William Friese-Greene.

How Photographers ‘Photoshopped’ Their Pictures Back in 1946

Retouching and manipulating photographs is done with fancy photo-editing programs these days, but back in 1946, making adjustments required a lot more than a computer, some software, and some pointing-and-clicking skills. Retouching required a whole box of tools, a very sharp eye, and an extremely steady hand.

Old-School Photos of People Posing With Old-School Cameras

One of the big trends in the camera industry these days is the stuffing of "big camera" sensors into "small camera" bodies. After all, if you can get the same image quality from a camera that's smaller in size, why wouldn't you want to? (That's the idea, at least).

The quality and portability of cameras these days would be quite astonishing to photographers from back in the earlier days of photography -- the days in which you needed both hands and a strong back to work as a photojournalist. In this post, we've compiled photos from those "good ol' days" to see how far photography has come.

Woman Photoshops Herself and Her Cell Phone Camera into Historical Photos

Hungarian photographer and retoucher Flóra Borsi created a popular series of photos last year titled "Photoshop in Real Life." The images imagined what various Photoshop Tools might be used for if they had physical powers in our world, and were quickly shared across the web.

Now Borsi is back with a new set of images that show off her Photoshopping prowess. Titled "Time Travel," the photos show Borsi inserted into various historical photographs of famous individuals.

Photographer Hunts for Vintage Cameras That Contain Undeveloped Film

Two years ago, photographer Chris A. Hughes purchased a 1914 French Richard Verascope camera (shown above) from an elderly man who was clearing out his camera collection in preparation for retirement. When he got into his car after the purchase, Hughes was surprised to find two packages of slides in the camera's leather case.

Upon closer examination, he discovered that the photographs on the slides were captured by a French soldier during World War I.

Free Digital Versions of Old Photography Books That Are in the Public Domain

Project Gutenberg is a digital library volunteer effort that takes old public domain and converts them into freely available eBooks for the benefit of the general public. Founded back in 1971, the library now has over 42,000 items in its collection.

Among the books in its collection are a number of old books on the subject of photography. One such book is the 1881 title, The Art and Practice of Silver Printing by Capt. Abney and H. P. Robinson (shown above).

Photos of Modern Day Locations Blended with Shots of Major Historical Events

In 2010, photographer Seth Taras created a series of photographs for a worldwide marketing campaign for the History Channel with the message "Know Where You Stand." The photographer shot photos at locations around the world where major historical events happened, and then blended old photos showing those events from the same perspective. It's the same "then and now" concept that has become quite popular over the past few years.

William Eggleston and the Validation of Color Photography as Legitimate Art

William Eggleston didn’t invent color photography, but his landmark 1976 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art gave it dignity, and began the four-decade process of acceptance by curators and collectors as an art form to rival oil painting.

Shot in 1970, “Untitled (Memphis)” – shown above – was one of the 75 photos in the show, and also featured on the cover of the catalogue. Now it’s included in a retrospective of Eggleston’s early work at the Metropolitan.

Photos of the White House Gutted During Its Truman Reconstruction

Did you know that the White House was completely gutted and rebuilt on the inside between 1949 and 1952? After decades of poor maintenance, the building was in danger of collapsing in 1948, which forced President Harry Truman to move out and commission a complete gutting and rebuilding of the building's insides.

The U.S. National Archives has been publishing photographs showing the gutted White House to its Flickr photostream.

A Complete Professional Photography Kit for $15.35… Back in the Year 1900

Want to buy all the camera equipment you need to start a photography business for just $15.35? All you'll need is... a time machine! Reddit user sneeden found this Sears Roebuck and Co. consumer guide for the fall of 1900. Two of the pages inside the catalog are for view camera kits that can help anyone "start in a pleasant and good paying business."

Photos from the World’s First Underwater Nuclear Explosion

In in 1946, the United States conducted a series of nuclear weapon tests at Bikini Atoll in what's known as Operation Crossroads. A total of two bombs were detonated to test the effects nuclear blasts had on naval warships. The second, named Baker, was the world's first nuke to be detonated underwater. Due to the unique properties of underwater explosions, the Baker test produced a number of unique photographs that the world had never seen before.

Headless Portraits From the 19th Century

It's not easy to remember life before Photoshop. When we do, we think of a world where picture were straightforward, always showing exactly what happened to be in front of the lens when the exposure was taken. But that's not entirely the case.

Trick photography has been around for centuries, and even though the folks in Victorian times weren't nearly as concerned with artificially slimming down, they did like to have some photographic fun once in a while. This set of headless photographs from the 19th century is a great example of the kind of 'fun' we're talking about.

Double Exposure: A Clever Photo Prank From Half a Century Ago

When the engineering students and staff of King's College in London gathered together to take a faculty portrait, the photographer used an old camera that panned from left to right in order to capture an extremely long panorama of the entire group in one frame. It worked a bit like the panorama features on modern smartphones: start the exposure on one side of the frame, and then gradually sweep the camera across the scene while everyone in the frame stays as still as possible.

Pilgrimage: A Photographer’s Journey to One of the Birthplaces of Photography

If you're at all interested in the history of photography, Henry Fox Talbot is a pioneer that you need to be familiar with. Although French pioneer Louis Daguerre is often credited with being "the father of photography," Talbot, based in England, had announced his own photographic process in the same year. Daguerre's daguerreotype process dominated the industry early on, but Talbot's process -- one that involved creating photographic negatives and then printing photos with them -- eventually became the standard model used in the 20th century.