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Vintage photos of:
Our holdings include hundreds of glass and film negatives/transparencies that we've scanned ourselves; in addition, many other photos on this site were extracted from reference images (high-resolution tiffs) in the Library of Congress research archive. (To query the database click here.) They are adjusted, restored and reworked by your webmaster in accordance with his aesthetic sensibilities before being downsized and turned into the jpegs you see here. All of these images (including "derivative works") are protected by copyright laws of the United States and other jurisdictions and may not be sold, reproduced or otherwise used for commercial purposes without permission.
[REV 25-NOV-2014]
March 1941. "Bedford, Virginia." Would you buy a used DeSoto from these men? Medium format acetate negative by John Vachon for the Farm Security Administration. View full size.
March 1941. "Mother and child. Bedford County farm, Virginia." Medium format acetate negative by John Vachon for the Farm Security Administration. View full size.
The place: Van Ness Avenue in San Francisco, with St. Mary's Cathedral at far left. The year: 1921. The subject: Three Easterners who've motored west in a battered Cadillac touring car. 6½ x 8½ inch glass negative, originally from the Wyland Stanley collection. View full size.
Washington, D.C., circa 1904. "H.D. Watts." Maryland Agricultural College alum (and Cadet Major, as well as tennis champion, football captain, calculus whiz, etc.) Harry Dorsey Watts, last seen here. 5x7 glass negative from the C.M. Bell portrait studio. View full size.
December 1940. "Courthouse. Saturday afternoon. Gadsden, Alabama." Medium format acetate negative by John Vachon for the Farm Security Administration. View full size.
March 1941. "Boy from North Carolina. Family has just moved to Newport News, Virginia, for work in shipyards." Medium format acetate negative by John Vachon. View full size.
December 1940. "Resident of Nashville, Tennessee." Medium format acetate negative by John Vachon for the Farm Security Administration. View full size.
Completed in 1897; burned to the ground by a massive fire in 1950.
Circa 1904. "Hotel Ausable Chasm, Ausable Chasm, N.Y." 8x10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Photographic Company. View full size.
December 1940. "Negro soldiers. Columbus, Georgia." Medium format acetate negative by John Vachon for the Farm Security Administration. View full size.
May 1939. "Gas station between Tulare and Fresno on U.S. 99." Medium format acetate negative by Dorothea Lange for the Farm Security Administration. View full size.
July 1939. "Children of May Avenue camp pumping water from thirty-foot well which supplies about a dozen families. Oklahoma City, Oklahoma." Photo by Russell Lee. View full size.
General caption: Photographs show exterior and interior of shacks, tents, other makeshift shelter in May Avenue camp, which is partially under bridge and adjacent to city dump and hog wallow. Squalor, filth, vermin in which poverty-stricken inhabitants dwell. Water supplied by shallow wells and water peddler. Piles of rubbish and debris in which children and adults have injured feet. Privies. Families eating food from vegetable dumps, packing houses and discarded from hospital. Children clothed in gunny sacks. Malnourished babies. Sick people. Cooking, washing, ironing, patching. Improvised chicken coop. Corn patch."
1904. Washington, D.C. "H.D. Watts, 6th Street." Proud alumnus of Maryland Agricultural College. 5x7 inch glass negative from the C.M. Bell portrait studio. View full size.
"Watts, Miss -- between February 1901 and December 1903." Portrait of a well-rounded ingenue. 5x7 glass negative from the C.M. Bell studio in Washington, D.C. View full size.
March 1941. "Negro family waiting for ride into town. Halifax County, Virginia." Medium format acetate negative by John Vachon for the Farm Security Administration. View full size.
November 1940. "Home supervisor examining canned goods of FSA rehabilitation borrower in food storage cave. Labette County, Kansas." Acetate negative by John Vachon. View full size.