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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]
Summer 1938. Hamburger stand at the Buckeye Lake amusement park near Columbus. View full size. 35mm nitrate negative by Ben Shahn, who goes on to describe the place: "Buckeye Lake is the weekend and summer months resort for all of central Ohio. Its patrons are clerks, Columbus politicians, laborers, businessmen, droves of high school and college students. The rich occupy one side of the lake, the rest rent cottages on the other side. It has an evil reputation and an evil smell. It has furnished Columbus and the neighboring small towns and cities with dancing, cottaging, swimming, etc. for several generations. This is the most unsavory place the photographer ran across in Ohio." But how are the hot dogs?
Summer 1938. Newark, Ohio. "Boy in front of liquor store." View full size. 35mm nitrate negative by Ben Shahn for the Farm Security Administration.
6 p.m., January 31, 1912. "Making hair-brushes. Hausner family, 310 East 71st Street, New York. Frank is 6 years old and John is 12. The mother had a sore throat and wore a great rag wrapped around it, but she took it off for the photo. They said they all (including the 6 yr old) worked until 10 p.m. when busy. Their neighbor corroborated this. She said, 'It's a whole lot better for the boys than doin' nothin'.' The mother said the night work hurts their eyes and John said so too. He was not very enthusiastic about the beauties of work. All together, they make about $2 a week. Father is a motorman." Photo and caption by Lewis Wickes Hine. View full size.
Arthur Fields, singer and composer ("Abba Dabba Honeymoon"), and family washing their Stutz in 1919. View full size. George Grantham Bain Collection.
The vaudevillian, singer and composer Arthur Fields (Abe Finkelstein) circa 1920. View full size. 5x7 glass negative, George Grantham Bain Collection.
October 1940. Pie Town schoolchildren in a community musical program. 35mm Kodachrome transparency by Russell Lee. View full size. Another view is here.
July 1940. Migrant camp at a fruit-packing plant in Berrien County, Michigan. (On the car: yet another Shell Oil license-plate ornament.) View full size. 35mm nitrate negative by John Vachon for the Farm Security Administration.
November 1938. Liquor store in Omaha, Nebraska. View full size. 35mm nitrate negative by John Vachon for the Farm Security Administration.
"Crowd at Ebbets Field. Oct. 5, 1920." In the first game of the 1920 World Series between the Indians and Dodgers, the final score was Cleveland 3, Brooklyn 1. View full size. 5x7 glass negative, George Grantham Bain Collection.
October 1935. Cotton pickers in Pulaski County, Arkansas. View full size. 35mm nitrate negative by Ben Shahn for the Farm Security Administration.
More from the 1939 carnival in Bozeman, Montana. View full size. 35mm negative by Arthur Rothstein, who by the time the decade was out had photo- graphed pretty much every square inch of North America. Anyone got a dime?
July 1941. Cadillac Fleetwood parked on a Chicago street. View full size. 35mm nitrate negative by John Vachon for the Farm Security Administration.
July 1938. Back alley showing housing conditions in Ambridge, Pennsylvania. View full size. 35mm nitrate negative by Arthur Rothstein for the FSA.
January 1939. An evicted sharecropper among his possessions in New Madrid County, Missouri. View full size. 35mm nitrate negative by Arthur Rothstein.
July 1938. Another view of "housing conditions in Ambridge, Pennsylvania, home of the American Bridge Company." View full size. Photo by Arthur Rothstein. While I guess the point here is the decrepit nature of the neighborhood, it looks to have been a great place to grow up. Like something from a Neil Simon play.