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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]
July 1939. "Tent home of family living in community camp. Oklahoma City." Photo by Russell Lee for the Farm Security Administration. View full size.
July 1939. Oklahoma City. "Children taking bath in their home in May Avenue community camp." Medium format negative by Russell Lee. View full size.
July 1939. "Resident of May Avenue camp, Oklahoma City, taking piece of glass out of boy's foot." Medium format negative by Russell Lee. View full size.
July 1939. "Woman living in camp near May Avenue, Oklahoma City. Her husband has been denied work relief. He is a world war veteran." Medium format negative by Russell Lee for the Farm Security Administration. View full size.
July 1939. Oklahoma City. "Shacks, tents, other makeshift shelter in May Avenue camp, which is partially under bridge and adjacent to city dump and hog wallow. Photographs show squalor, filth and 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, packinghouses and discarded from hospital. Children clothed in gunny sacks. Malnourished babies. Sick people. Cooking, washing, ironing, patching. Improvised chicken coop. Corn patch." Medium format negative by Russell Lee for the Farm Security Administration. View full size.
July 1939. Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. "Children of May Avenue camp family in small shack used as sleeping quarters. Poverty-stricken inhabitants here dwell in squalor, filth and vermin." Medium format acetate negative by Russell Lee for the Farm Security Administration. View full size.
July 1939. "Detail of square dance in hills near McAlester, Pittsburg County, Oklahoma. Sharecropper's home." Medium format acetate negative by Russell Lee for the Farm Security Administration. View full size.
"Fageol Motors Co. truck assembly -- Oakland, California, 1918." 8x10 glass negative by the Cheney Photo Advertising Company. View full size.
New York circa 1908. "Fraunces Tavern, Tallmadge Memorial, Pearl and Broad Streets." Seen earlier here circa 1900, before its restoration with funds willed by Frederick Tallmadge. 8x10 inch dry plate glass negative. View full size.
February 1939. "Corpus Christi, Texas. Wife of war veteran living in shantytown on Nueces Bay." The lady last seen here. Medium format acetate negative by Russell Lee for the Farm Security Administration. View full size.
1908. "Loading scrap. Homestead Steel Works, Homestead, Pennsylvania." 8x10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company. View full size.
Columbus, Georgia, circa 1950. "Mrs. Clarence Butler" is all it says here. 4x5 inch acetate negative from the Shorpy News Photo Archive. View full size.
December 1938. "Napa Valley. More than 25 years a bindlestiff. [Also seen here.] Walks from the mines to the lumber camps to the farms. The type that formed the backbone of the Industrial Workers of the World in California before the war. Subject of Carleton Parker's studies on Industrial Workers of the World." Photo by Dorothea Lange for the Farm Security Administration. View full size.
July 1938. "Coffee shop in Ambridge, Pennsylvania, home of the American Bridge Company." Medium format negative by Arthur Rothstein. View full size.
San Francisco circa 1921. "Gardner car at Spreckels Mansion." Photographed by and with Christopher Helin himself. 5x7 glass negative. View full size.