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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]
January 1943. The Sangre de Cristo Mountains above Penasco, New Mexico, looking north into Colorado. View full size. 4x5 Kodachrome by John Collier.
September 13, 1916. Henderson County, Kentucky. "Colored School at Anthoston. Census 27, enrollment 12, attendance 7. Teacher expects 19 to be enrolled after work is over. 'Tobacco keeps them out and they are short of hands.' Ages of those present: 13 to 5." View full size. Photo by Lewis Wickes Hine.
February 1942 in Weslaco, Texas. "Boy musician" was the caption given by photographer Arthur Rothstein to this portrait of Weldon Drake, shown in yesterday's posts playing with his father and brother at a Farm Security Administration Saturday-night dance. View full size.
December 24, 1943. Washington, D.C. Christmas Eve party given by Local 203 of the United Federal Workers of America, Congress of Industrial Organizations. View full size. Medium-format safety negative by Joseph Horne.
August 1939. Agricultural migrants. "Family who traveled by freight train. Toppenish, Washington. Yakima Valley." View full size. Medium-format nitrate negative by Dorothea Lange for the Farm Security Administration.
July 1939. "Corner of tobacco farmer's front room. Shows enclosed stairway and corner of the new fancy bed. Person County, North Carolina." (Whitfield home.) Medium-format nitrate negative by Dorothea Lange. View full size.
December 1943. Another classic from Esther Bubley and her ever-inquiring camera: "Washington, D.C. In the library at the United Nations service center. Boys are urged to take books back to camp with them." View full size.
December 1943. "In the evening, Hugh Massman and his wife fold diapers. Joey's bureau drawer crib is moved to the side of their bed for the night." The Massmans were a young Navy family whose lives in Washington, D.C., were documented by Office of War Information photographer Esther Bubley. We're fortunate to have heard from their son Bascomb, whose comments have served as informative and entertaining annotations for these pictures. View full size.
August 1939. "Sick migrant child. Washington, Yakima Valley, Toppenish." The daughter of migrant laborers harvesting hops in Washington State. Medium format nitrate negative by Dorothea Lange for the FSA. View full size.
July 1939. "Zollie Lyons, Negro sharecropper, home from the field for dinner at noontime, with his wife and part of his family. Note dog run. Wake County, North Carolina." View full size. Medium-format nitrate negative by Dorothea Lange.
From February 1942, another of Arthur Rothstein's photos of the Drake family entertaining at a Saturday night dance for the Farm Security Administration's resettlement camp at Weslaco, Texas, home to many farm families displaced by the droughts and bankruptcies of the Dust Bowl years. The fiddle player is Nathan Drake; on banjo and guitar are his sons Jasper ("Sleepy") and Weldon. Thanks to Jasper's daughters Connie and Janette for providing the names. View full size. (I'm having a Shorpy family moment here, having heard from the photographer's daughter, Annie Rothstein-Segan, and now Jasper's daughters. Life is a circle.)
July 1939. Whitfield family. Wife of tobacco sharecropper drying the baby after its bath in the kitchen. Person County, North Carolina, near Gordonton. Medium-format nitrate negative by Dorothea Lange for the FSA. View full size.
February 5, 1921. "Miss Bertha May Graf, chosen the prettiest girl at suffrage headquarters in Washington, will be chief flower girl at the National Woman's Party convention." Miss Graf resides at 1429 Longfellow Street NW in the District of Columbia. View full size. 4x5 glass negative, National Photo Company.
Spring 1865. Children on Canal Bridge at the foot of Seventh Street in Richmond after the fall of the city. Left half of a glass-plate stereograph. View full size.
July 3, 1913. "Fun at camp." Boy Scouts in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. 5x7 glass negative, George Grantham Bain Collection. View full size.