When photographer Edward S. Curtis moved out west to Washington state in 1887, he used his camera to capture the experiences of Native Americans. Over the span of 30 years, Curtis documented over 80 tribes west of the Mississippi, from the Mexican border to northern Alaska. ...read more
In the 1800s, taking a photo of a dead body wasn’t creepy—it was comforting. In an era when photos were expensive and many people didn’t have any pictures of themselves when they were alive, post-mortem photography was a way for families to remember their ...read more
Getting the perfect shot in wartime is not only about weapons. With over 30 countries involved in World War II and the loss of over 50 million lives, war photography captured the destruction and victories of the deadliest war in history. Lead by Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, over one ...read more
During the 1930s, America went through one of its greatest challenges: the Great Depression. President Franklin D. Roosevelt attempted to relieve the dire economic situation with his New Deal programs. To justify the need for those projects, the government employed photographers ...read more
The Industrial Revolution brought not only new job opportunities but new laborers to the workforce: children. By 1900, 18 percent of all American workers were under the age of 16. For employers of the era, children were seen as appealing workers since they could be hired for ...read more
Now you see him—now you don’t. Compare a 1934photo of four Communist Party officials in the USSR and you’ll see Avel Enukidze, photographed next to Soviet premier Vyacheslav Molotov and others. But during Josef Stalin’s Great Purge, the onetime member of the Communist party’s ...read more
For centuries black communities around the world have created hairstyles that are uniquely their own. These hairstyles span all the way back to the ancient world and continue to weave their way through the social, political and cultural conversations surrounding black identity ...read more
The Past in Color features the work of colorist Marina Amaral, bringing to life black and white photos with color applied digitally. Farsighted but underrated, John Quincy Adams was a president of firsts. He was the first president not to have been a founding father. The first ...read more
The Past in Colorfeatures the work of colorist Marina Amaral, bringing to life black and white photos with color applied digitally. Blue lips. Blackened skin. Blood leaking from noses and mouths. Coughing fits so intense they ripped muscles. Crippling headaches and body pains ...read more
The Past in Color features the work of colorist Marina Amaral, bringing to life black and white photos with color applied digitally. In May 1956 the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. posed for a set of photographs at home with his young family in Montgomery, Alabama. It had ...read more
At first glance, the faded 1903 photograph of Mme Debeinche’s bedroom, bound in the yellowed pages of an early 20th-century album, shows what looks to be an unremarkable middle-class Parisian apartment of the time. The overstuffed room brims with floral decoration, from the ...read more
The New Deal was one of President Roosevelt’s efforts to end the Great Depression. Art projects were a major part of this series of federal relief programs, like the Public Works of Art Project, the Treasury Section of Painting and Sculpture and the Treasury Relief Art Project. ...read more
When the daguerreotype—the proto-photo—was first popularized in 1839, French poet and critic Charles Baudelaire railed against the form, calling it “deplorable.” And in the 178 years since its invention, the camera—and photographers—have courted controversy and headlines in equal ...read more
Throughout the morning of August 14, 1945, Greta Zimmer had heard the rumors circulating New York City. Japan had accepted the Allied terms for surrender. The world war that had torn her family apart was finally over. The 21-year-old dental assistant hoped that the reports of ...read more
Immediately after Truman made the announcement of Japan’s surrender in World War II, at 7:03 p.m. on August 14, 1945, an American sailor walking through Times Square grabbed a nearby nurse and bent her over backwards in a passionate-seeming kiss amid the cheering crowds ...read more
1. Camera Obscura: 5th century B.C. Long before there was the camera, there was the camera obscura. Literally translated as “dark chamber,” these devices consisted of darkened rooms or enclosed boxes with a tiny opening on one side. When sunlight passed through this “pinhole” and ...read more
1. “Migrant Mother,” 1936, California In 1936, photographer Dorothea Lange shot this image of a destitute woman, 32-year-old Florence Owens, with an infant and two other of her seven children at a pea-pickers camp in Nipomo, California. Lange took the photo, which came to be ...read more
• Born on November 18, 1787, in Cormeilles-en-Parisis, France, Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre grew up in a middle-class family. His father, a royalist despite the outbreak of the French Revolution, named one of his daughters after Marie Antoinette. • Because of political upheaval ...read more
William Jackson is born in Keeseville, New York. His powerful photographs of Yellowstone helped make it the first national park. Jackson received no formal training in photography. As a young man, he began experimenting with simple cameras, and he gradually mastered the arcane ...read more
The famous western photographer Ansel Adams is born in San Francisco. Adams’ dramatic black and white images of Yosemite and the West are some of the most widely recognized and admired photographs of the 20th century. Ansel Adams discovered his love of photography and the West ...read more