94 Incredible Photos That Capture Unexpected Moments From American History

These days, it can be easy to think of photographs simply as images. Because for the vast majority of us, that’s how we encounter them. Made up of a bunch of pixels, we mostly see them on screens, as digital files that can be copied, shared, and scrolled past in less than a second. And we take them—plenty of them—just as quickly, often forgetting about them soon after, and very rarely ever actually printing them.

But there was once a time—in fact, it was this way for much of photography’s history—when a photograph was understood to be a physical thing: something that could be held, displayed, put in an album, sent through the post, or tucked away someplace private. Sure, they captured a fleeting moment in time, but they became concrete, tangible things.

What’s particularly interesting about this is that it reminds us that historical photos are not simply images of the past but also objects from the past. They’re records or evidence of people, places, and events, but they’re also artifacts—things people made, owned, used, and passed on. And that means they can tell us something not only about what was captured in the frame, but about the people and world around it.

Writing for the Smithsonian, Steven Lubar and Kathleen Kendrick define artifacts as “the objects we make and use,” arguing that they can offer “another way of approaching the past.” Unlike textbooks, which tend to focus on major documents and events, artifacts can reveal another kind of history, helping us understand the people who made and used them, as well as the values, knowledge, and tastes of the societies around them. “Artifacts,” they say, “are the touchstones that bring memories and meanings to life. They make history real.”

Part of what makes them such touchstones is that they can open up the world beyond themselves. Lubar and Kendrick explain that when we take the object as a point of departure, we open up the world “beyond the artifact” and “learn a different kind of history.” When artifacts are imagined in context—not in isolation but against a backdrop of people, places, and events—they “become passageways into history,” they write. Through them, “we can connect to a moment in time, a person's life, a set of values and beliefs.”

It’s an idea that extends naturally to both the photographs and the other material traces in this collection. A photograph might show us a person, building, or event, but the details surrounding the main subject can tell another story. Clothing, cars, shop signs, furniture, and architecture can reveal something about everyday life, technology, commerce, and changing tastes.

A menu, ticket stub, route map showing travel times, or old grammar test can likewise offer unexpected glimpses into everyday life—what people ate, how they traveled, what they learned, and how they spent their time.

Of course, none of these traces necessarily tells one complete story. A photograph might capture a brief moment in its subject’s life. But it also forms part of the photographer’s story, the story of someone only incidentally captured in the frame, and our collective story, too. Then there are all the stories that explain how and why the photograph still exists in the present—kept, stored, passed on, digitized, archived. The same can be said of objects like Abraham Lincoln’s hat featured on this list. It can simultaneously act as an eerie trace of his last night, show us something about the fashion of the time, and speak to the craft of the person who designed and made it.

In other words, as Lubar and Kendrick argue, artifacts can “lead to many stories,” and their meanings can change depending on the context in which they are viewed and interpreted. This means that they can be “interpreted and reinterpreted, viewed and reviewed,” they explain.

And perhaps that’s part of this list’s appeal. These are objects that were made, kept, preserved, maybe passed down, and ultimately reproduced as images on our screens. And while they might be old, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re done telling us things.