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]
Vintage photos of:
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.