In the 20th century, the city began to grow upwards as well as outwards. The column with the Angel of Independence was erected, the ironwork Legislative Palace, Palacio de Bellas Artes and a building called La Nacional. The first skyscraper, 40-story Torre Latinoamericana was built in the 1950s. The construction...
Drag Racers (1950s)
Drag racing clubs got involved with civic projects to curry good favor in their communities. They liaised with local police and disciplined drivers who practiced their lead-footed habits outside of officially sanctioned racing strips. They disapproved of illegal street racing as fervently as the law enforcement that aimed to shut...
Hollywood Streets (1979-1983)
In the late 1970s, Matt Sweeney dropped out of high school with dreams of becoming a movie maker. While working in gas stations and restaurants in San Jose, California, he found out about Francis Ford Coppola's Zoetrope education/training/intern program, and moved to Hollywood to pursue that. Matt wanted to work...
San Francisco in the late 1970s
In the late 1970s, in the face of then expanding dereliction and as part of efforts to remake the neighborhood, city authorities condemned many of the residential hotels that had become a hallmark of the area, displacing many residents and small businesses. It was at this time that photographer Janet...
Portraits of Celebrities by Art Kane (1960s)
Art Kane (1925 - 1995) was one of the most influential photographers of the twentieth century. A bold visionary, Kane’s work encompassed fashion, editorial, celebrity portraiture, travel, and nudes with a relentless and innovative eye. Like his contemporaries, Guy Bourdin (1928 - 1991) and Helmut Newton (1924 - 2004), Kane...
Historic photos of China (1889-1891)
In the 19th century, the great Chinese Diaspora began. Losses due to emigration were added to by conflicts and catastrophes such as the Northern Chinese Famine of 1876–79, in which between 9 and 13 million people died. In 1898, the Guangxu Emperor drafted a reform plan to establish a modern...
Streets of California in 1980s
Collection of street views of California in 1980s. via POP SNAP
Woodstock Fashion (1969)
The Woodstock was a music festival, billed as "An Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music". It was held at Max Yasgur's 600-acre dairy farm in the Catskills near the hamlet of White Lake in the town of Bethel, New York, from August 15 to 18, 1969. The festival...
Russia Before the Revolution (1907-1915)
Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky (1863–1944) became photographically renowned in Russia for a color portrait of Leo Tolstoy. It was this fame that, in 1909, brought him to the attention of Tsar Nicholas II. Prokudin-Gorsky's subsequent meeting with the tsar and the tsar's family was to be the pivotal moment in his life:...
The FBI’s fingerprint files called ‘Notorious Dead Criminals’
Filing doesn't have to be dull. Here is the evidence — in more ways than one. These photos picture the FBI's overflow filing system, housed during World War 2 in the Washington, D.C. Armory. By the early 1940s, the FBI's archive housed more than 23 million card and 10 million...