Toy show at Madison Square Garden, 1908. View full size. George Grantham Bain Collection. In the foreground: Junior Aero Club display. Several shadowy blurs can be seen in this time exposure moving about what at first glance appears to be a deserted exhibit space. The car merry-go-round is slowly revolving.

A colorful scene from the Vermont State Fair at Rutland, September 1941. View full size. 35mm Kodachrome transparency by Jack Delano.

Barker at Vermont State Fair, Rutland. September 1941. View full size. 35mm Kodachrome transparency by Jack Delano.

Whitehall Street, Atlanta, 1864. This photo of a black Union soldier posted at a slave auction house in Atlanta is one of hundreds taken by George N. Barnard during Gen. Sherman's occupation of the city in the fall of 1864. Many were destroyed in the conflagration that erupted upon Sherman's firing of Confederate munitions stores when he departed on Nov. 15. View full size.

"The War in the West." 1864 photo (half of a stereograph) by George N. Barnard. Atlanta Intelligencer newspaper office by the railroad depot. Exposure times were so long that anyone walking appears only as an ectoplasmic blur. View full size. Note tents in background and troop train with soldiers atop the boxcars.

Chain gang of convicts engaged in road work, Autumn 1910. Pitt County, North Carolina. The inmates are quartered in the wagons, which are equipped with bunks and move from place to place as labor is utilized. The central figure is J.Z. McLawhon, county superintendent of chain gangs. The dogs are bloodhounds used for running down any attempted escapes. View full size.

Washington tenements, Nov. 1935. View full size. Photo by Carl Mydans.

Pittsburgh slum dwelling, 1938. View full size. Photograph by Arthur Rothstein.

"Summit Avenue Ensemble." Photographer Thomas Askew's twin sons Clarence and Norman, son Arthur, neighbor Jake Sansome, and sons Robert and Walter at the Askew home in Atlanta. 1899 or 1900. View full size. The Askew residence, at 114 Summit Avenue, burned in the Great Fire of 1917.

Washington, D.C., 1921. "Times boy and bicycle." Winner of a Mead Ranger bike by virtue of selling 30 newspaper subscriptions. The Ranger contest was a promotion of various papers from about 1917 to 1923. National Photo Co. Collection. View full size.

Western Union messengers in Hartford, Conn. March 1909. They are on duty, alternate nights, until 10 P.M. Messenger #32 is Thomas De Lucco, 9 years old, who works second job as newsboy. View full size. Photo by Lewis Wickes Hine.

Middleweight boxer George “Knockout” Brown (on right) and sparring partner, probably around 1912. View full size. George Grantham Bain Collection.

Harlem newsboy. May-June 1943. View full size. Photograph by Gordon Parks.

Company houses at Scotts Run mining camp near Morgantown, West Virginia. July 1935. View full size. Photograph by Walker Evans.

June 1913. Poughkeepsie, New York. "Washington Varsity 8." View full size. George Grantham Bain Collection. So why do some of the rowers in these pictures (above, and also two men here) have bandaged abs ... chafing from where the oars hit? Intra-crew knife fights?