Say Cheese
We love this set of photographs from 1890, of a couple giggling between frames – mainly because of how rare it is to see ‘outtakes’ of historical photographs. Unlike today where advances in technology allow for tens of photos to be snapped in mere seconds (most of which are later deleted,), in the Victorian era and the dawn of portrait photography, each photo taken was precious. Not only are these photos incredibly rare, but just as rare is the Victorian portrait where someone is smiling at the camera!
In 1890 when this couple was captured, the camera itself took an exceptionally long time – sometimes as long as fifteen minutes, and holding a smile for that long would definitely be physically challenging! So instead, somber or unsmiling portraits were the mainstay of the day.
Living Testaments
In 1944, Walter and Werner were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest of the German Nazi concentration camps during World War II, where over 1.1 million men, women, and children lost their lives. Auschwitz was the only camp to tattoo Jewish prisoners as they arrived. Incredibly, Walter and Werner arrived on the same day and were tattooed just ten numbers apart: A1828 and A1838, but despite being in the camp at the same time, they had never met until this reunion, seventy years later.
The third man in this truly incredible photo is also a Holocaust survivor who was sent to Auschwitz, and was brought together with Werner and Walter by the Last Eye Witness Project which is dedicated to preserving and sharing the stories of Holocaust survivors.
Iranian Women Protest Against The Hijab Law
Iran has had a history of forcing various laws on women that call Iran home. Though this photo is of a protest in Tehran in 1979, things haven’t changed very much. Even to this day, in 2022, the same demonstrations are happening around the country. However, Iran wasn’t always like this. There was a time when it was a modern world, and women could go to college, work, and not wear a hijab if they chose not to.
Though considering the same protests are happening over forty years later, all the Iranian citizens can do is hope and pray for things to change eventually.
Fantastic Voyage
The beautiful thing about this casual but stunning photo of David Bowie and Iman, is that it reflects one of the rarest things in the world of celebrity and fame: authenticity. The musician and model kept their relationship and marriage extremely private. “I fell in love with David Jones,” Iman told The Guardian newspaper in 2014, “I did not fall in love with David Bowie. Bowie is just a persona.”.
Bowie and Iman were set up on a blind date by his hairstylist, back in the 1990s! They married just two years later, going on to have a 26-year relationship until Bowie’s untimely death in 2016.
First Woman to the Moon
Margaret Hamilton, featured in this rare historical photo from 1969, is the software engineer that history forgot to make into a household name, like Neil Armstrong or Buzz Aldrin. Hamilton led the NASA software team that landed the Apollo astronauts on the moon. She was a ‘software engineer’ before anybody even knew of the term, and in the photo featured, is standing next to what is believed to be the code or program listings for the successful Apollo space mission.
“She was a pioneer when it came to development of software engineering and…a pioneer as a woman in the workplace contributing to this type of program, taking on this type of role.” – said Dr. Teasel Muir-Harmony, the curator of the Project Apollo collection at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.
The Italian Way
Sophia Loren, award-winning Italian actress of the 1950s-1970s, is as famous for her talent as her curves. Loren was hailed as an “Italian Marilyn Monroe” when she burst onto the Hollywood scene in 1957, famous for her quote “I’d rather eat pasta and drink wine than be a size 0”. Her beauty and her famous silhouette may have overshadowed her talent, but her long career is a testament to her dedication to her career.
Sophia Loren won an academy award for Best Actress for her role in ‘Two Women’ and went on to win countless awards and nominations during her career, including no less than five Golden Globes.
Bernie and Birmingham
Snapped here at a protest in 1963 in Birmingham, Alabama, Bernie Sanders would go on to become a US senator and eventually run for the office of President of the United States. In this rarely seen photo a young Sanders is hauled off by policemen for taking part in a nonviolent protest; which began in Birmingham in the early 1960s backed by Dr. Martin Luther King, when the city was still largely racially divided.
Through marches, boycotts, sit-ins and the involvement of the international media, Dr. King and the nonviolent direct action campaign eventually forced desegregation in Birmingham.
Under the Radar
This genuinely rare photo appears in a book by Hugh Nini and Neal Treadwell, published in 2020, entitled ‘A Photographic History of Men In Love, 1850s-1950s’. The book is a collection of moving photos – some taken secretly – of couples throughout that specific period in history, when male partnerships were illegal. The photos reflect men and couples from all walks of life, and are a rare glimpse into private worlds, kept secret and hidden from society.
‘…These photos had stood the test of time for somewhere between 70 and 170 years, and we were now the custodians of these unlikely survivors of a world that is only just beginning to catch up,’ the book says.
Spiky on the Outside, Soft in the Middle
Punks are people too! Reminding us that the “hard-as-nails” reputation of punk rockers is just a front, a punk kneels down at the request of a little boy who just wanted to feel the spikes on his jacket! Snapped at a Pride event in 2009, we love this photo for all the obvious reasons – the little boy’s excited expression, and the look of amusement and ease on the seemingly tough man’s face.
With a leather jacket, boots, black clothes, and a mohawk all accounted for, this punk is living his best life and proving that our outsides are just that – surface only.
Dolly and Dean
Ever heard of Dolly Parton’s husband? Neither had we! So rare is a photograph or sighting of them together, it used to have some believing he didn’t exist! But he does, and his name is Carl Dean. The couple is extremely private, which may just be the secret to their long-lasting marriage, currently going on 56 years. They met when Dolly was just 18, got married two years later. They have been together ever since!
On their 50th wedding anniversary, Dolly and Carl renewed their vows with Dolly quoted as saying, “I’m dragging him kicking and screaming into the next fifty years!”.
The Ways We Remember
Seen here are sixty pairs of iron shoes line the banks of the Danube river, a memorial to the Jews of Budapest, Hungary, who were murdered during WWII. When the nationalist-socialist political party Arrow Cross took power in 1944, they aligned themselves with the Antisemitic stance of Hitler’s Nazi party, and began deporting thousands of Jews to concentration camps. Within days of them taking power, 600 Jews were murdered – with many rounded up and shot on the banks of the Danube.
In total, over 100,000 Jews from Budapest perished during the Holocaust i.e. over 50% of the Jewish community was eradicated. The shoes stand as a monument to those who were murdered simply because of their religion.
At the Hour of Our Death
This moving, Pulitzer Prize-winning photo was taken by Héctor Rondón during a rebellion that took place over five days in 1962 in the South American country, Venezuela. In the photo, chaplain Luis María Padilla holds a wounded soldier who was seriously injured in the infamous El Porteñazo anti-government rebellion. He was among 700 people injured during the short-lived rebellion, which also left 400 people dead. The uprising was ultimately unsuccessful in overthrowing the government.
Rondon’s photo ‘Aid from the Padre’ won the 1962 World Press Photo of the Year, as well as the Pulitzer Prize for Photography in 1963.
German Red Cross Nurses During WWI
When you learn about WWI, you don’t really see photos of the German nurses that were attending to wounded soldiers. This gives you an interesting look into their world. During such a difficult and devastating time in history, you catch a glimpse of humanity while these women nurse the soldiers back to health. This photo was taken around 1915, and during this time, those who were nurses mainly volunteered to do so.
Seeing photos like this with your own eyes helps transport you back in history and feel more connected to the emotions that were felt when the image was taken.
Anne and Margot Frank
Two sisters happily, innocently playing in the sand in 1940 in Zandvoort, a beach resort in the Netherlands. Horrifically, just two years later, the lives of these two Jewish girls in Holland would be drastically altered. In 1942, regulations regarding Jews came into place in Holland with the enforcement of the yellow star, restrictions on movement, Jews fired from public positions and places of employment, and Jewish children barred from public schools. To escape deportment, the Frank family went into hiding in a secret annex behind her father’s offices in Amsterdam.
The Frank family hid in the annex for two years, along with two other families, with their whereabouts eventually reported they were sent to Westerbork and then onto Auschwitz where their mother died of starvation. The girls’ eventual deaths were recorded in Bergen-Belsen in 1944.
To Vax – It Wasn’t a Question
Two boys, one virus. The child on the left – unvaccinated, and the child on the right – received the vaccine. Before the smallpox virus was eradicated thanks to vaccines, as many as 9 in 10 babies died after contracting it. Smallpox was a life-threatening disease that involved pus-filled blisters all over your body. Smallpox survivors were often left blinded and terribly scarred. Although her name is not widely known, smallpox was eventually eradicated thanks to Lady Mary Montagu.
The vaccine for smallpox began with the idea of inoculation, Mary Montagu, herself a smallpox survivor and the wife of the British ambassador in Constantinople, wrote of the Turkish methods of ‘variolation’ that she had seen. She had both of her children inoculated, and while eventually, the British medical establishment recognized that this method worked – they gave her absolutely no credit.
Bringing Our Boys Home
This unbelievable photo is of the RMS Queen Elizabeth ship pulling into New York harbor in 1945, packed with US soldiers returning from Europe. The ship left Scotland on August 6th, 1945, and arrived in New York on August 11th, 1945. The ship looks absolutely packed which might be attributed to all of the soldiers coming up top for the arrival into NY, or it might be because Eisenhower opted to get more soldiers home all at once, rather than more ships with fewer soldiers on.
The original was taken in black and white, although it’s not clear how or from where the birdseye view photograph was captured. This color version of the photo is credited to Royston Leonard.
Self Service
After one look at this photo, the story just has to be told. This astonishing episode is not an urban legend or folk tale – a man really did perform an appendectomy on himself, in less than optimal conditions. While on a Soviet Antarctic expedition, surgeon Leonid Rogozov began to feel unwell and, as a doctor, understood his symptoms where those of acute appendicitis. With no hope of an airlift out of Antarctica, Rogozov decided to perform the surgery. On himself. Without general anesthetic.
He made sure assistants were on hand, that equipment was sterilized and a back-up plan of what to do should he pass out in the middle. It took almost two hours, but Rogozov did it. Back home in Russia, he was hailed as the pinnacle of Society fortitude and perseverance.