Always with an eye for a good story, UK-based photographer Matt Henry creates narrative fiction photographs that center around 1960′s/1970′s American culture. The images have a historical slant to them as well, as Henry explores what an abandoned suburban home might have looked like after a family sought shelter during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Henry makes it clear that his work isn’t about sadness or grievance, however, as is the case with his King series. He delves into the real-life tale of one of America’s biggest music sensations, Elvis. “The story is as much about the death of Elvis as its impact on an Elvis fan. I’m also interested in how the representation of something in whatever form (jigsaw, newspaper story, etc.) can somehow carry the power of the original, or even come to enhance that power.” See how Henry has kept the King alive — and learned to stop worrying and love the bomb — in his retro narrative series past the break. Read More »
The mug shot has, by now, become so universal that it’s hard to imagine a criminal justice system without it. But in the mid-19th century, when photography was still a new medium, there was no standardized record-keeping system in place to help police departments identify repeat criminals. Random daguerreotypes and loose photographs laying around unfiled weren’t cutting it — which is why in the early 1880s, French criminologist Alphonse Bertillon introduced the Paris police force to a standardized method that documented mug shots, body measurements, and in some cases, early finger prints.
That anthropometric Bertillon System, which was a recent subject of the podcast “Stuff You Missed in History Class,” would eventually be replaced with finger printing in the 1910s. But until then, its strange measurements — the width of the head, length of right ear, length of the cubit, etc. — represented huge advances in forensic science and criminal identification in both Europe and the States. Below the jump, browse through our gallery of Bertillon Card mug shots of 19th- and 20th-century suspicious persons, and make your own with the blanks we’ve included at the end. Read More »
The last time we checked in with designer Evan Stremke, we were admiring his series of morbidly attractive invitations to famous assassinations. Now, he’s in the midst of another project with a similar historical bent: The Momentus Project, which has Stremke inviting dozens of other designers to visualize important moments in United States history, from the Boston Massacre through the recent end of the NASA shuttle program. Although a few pieces still aren’t posted yet, the project is already both aesthetically pleasing and educational — once it’s complete, it could make a fantastic tool for teachers. Ten of our favorite Momentus works, which range from America’s finest hours to its most shameful, are after the jump.
Robert Krulwich and Adam Cole explore the pros and pitfalls of being immortalized in the English language in a comical, new animated video from NPR. In paper puppet form, Cole travels through the dictionary singing a folksy tune about those who have passed but live on as eponyms — something he’d very much like to do. But after Krulwich points out that not everyone who’s had something named after him has been better better off, citing Joseph Guillotin and John Duns Scotus as examples, Cole swiftly changes his tune. Watch the video after the jump.
With food trucks parked on the streets of every major city, serving up menu items from coffee to snail lollipops and everything in between, actual restaurants have started almost seem passé. But like so many trends, the food truck is actually a thing of the past, as well. Nineteenth-century ur-food trucks may not have sold their wares out of metal pigs or featured menus devoted entirely to egg salad, but they do date back to the chuckwagons of the 1860s, invented by a smart Texas ranger named Charles Goodnight who realized that putting a kitchen on wheels could solve a lot of people’s problems. Below the jump, we take you through a tour of the early history of the food truck.
The most iconic images of the Great Depression and World War II, from Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Motherto V-J Day in Times Square, like most of the period’s photos, are in black and white. But, as Photo District News reminds us, color photography did exist back then, and the US government’s Farm Security Administration and Office of War Information dispatched several photographers between 1939 and 1945 to capture everything from rural farmers to WWII machinists in vibrant color. In fact, the Library Congress has cataloged thousands of these images. We spent the morning browsing their archives; page through a gallery of our favorite photos from the collection after the jump.
From the US to China to Africa, one the greatest things cultures all over the world share is an appreciation for music. That’s the big takeaway of a fantastic photo gallery we discovered via Coudal Partners. In a four-part series called “I could just hear it…” Samm Bennett collects Flickr’s most impressive vintage photos of musicians. Our favorite shots include dancing dervishes in the Middle East, snake charmers in Morocco, a one-man polka sensation on the streets of Eastern Europe, and even some young bohemians in an instrument shop on St. Marks Place in new York. See them after the jump, and then click over to Bennett’s Flickr page for more.
National Public Radio chronicles four decades of broadcasting independent-arts and political programming across America with a new book presenting the faces behind the radio dial.
A constant companion to daily commuters and fans of arts and culture journalism, NPR celebrates what it does best in This Is NPR: The First Forty Years, combining stellar graphic design, in-depth interviews, behind-the-scenes photos, and rare anecdotes from its best-loved voices. And if reading the radio is too strange, there’s also an audio version.
A sampling of vintage urban artifacts, Past Objects provides a glimpse into the past through historical relics unearthed from the landfills, construction sites, privies, and cisterns of New York City.
Whether it’s antique liquor bottles and opium vials or elaborately carved pipes, porcelain dolls, and obsolete tools, amateur archeologist Scott Jordan has been digging for the past since the 1960s. Featuring photography by J.K. Putnam, Jordan’s book is a window into the daily life of early American city-dwellers, as well as a guidebook for modern metropolitan diggers in search of buried treasure.
Ever feel like you’ve forgotten everything that you learned about world history back in high school? Yep, us too. And then, thanks to BuzzFeed, we stumbled across historyteachers, a YouTube channel of popular songs remade into history lessons. Thanks to their creative covers of songs like “Bad Romance” and ”Creep” you don’t even have to crack a book to refresh your memory on what went down during the French Revolution or what we learned from the ancient Minoans — just rock out to these fact-laden spoofs of songs by artists like Lady Gaga and Radiohead.
