These days, when cameras are everywhere, from our phones to security cams in public spaces, it’s easy to forget that the major part of history has passed without them. Only in 1888, when Kodak released the first commercial camera, did they slowly begin permeating our lives.
But long before thousands of snaps on our camera rolls, photographs were reserved for capturing precious and one-of-a-kind moments. These incredible visual monuments of history have resurfaced and brought a whole new meaning to events and lives of people in the past.
And today we’re about to get on board down memory lane full of raw emotions and unstaged realities captured in these rare historical photos. After you’re done, make sure to check out our part 1 right here.
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100,000 Iranian Women March Against The Hijab Law, Tehran 1979
Meet The "Night Witches", Fearless Russian Female Pilots Who Bombed Nazis By Night, 1941
A Native American Mother And Her Child - 1900s
“Photography historians are each different in how they approach studying the life of the medium: some are interested in its technical history, asking what camera improvements, and limitations, meant for the people who became photographers,” Gabrielle Moser told Bored Panda.
Gabrielle is a writer, book author, independent curator, and Assistant Professor of Aesthetics and Art Education at York University. She was happy to share some insights into the wondrous world of historical photography and what photography historians do to bring them back to life.
“What could you literally photograph—because of film speed, exposure times, and the ability or inability to print multiple copies of an image—and what did that mean for the kinds of images that were made?” These are the inquiries photography historians are looking for the answers to.
In 1941, The Photo On The Left Was Taken Of Soviet Soldier Eugen Stepanovich Kobytev On The Day He Left To Go To War. The Photo On The Right Was Taken In 1945 After The End Of The War, Just 4 Years Apart
Keshia Thomas Protects An Alleged Kkk Supporter From A Mob In Ann Arbor, Mi, 1996
A Red Cross Nurse Writing Down Last Words Of Mortally Wounded Soldier, Taken Around 1917
“For instance,” Gabrielle continued, “war photography was incredibly difficult until the early 1900s since shutter speeds were so slow and exposure times were so long that any movement, like armed battle, wouldn’t be captured by the camera. That didn’t mean that photographers didn’t make images of wars, but that they had to be inventive, using staging, re-enactment, or capturing the aftermath of battle, as Roger Fenton, Mathew Brady, and Timothy O’Sullivan were all very skilled at.”
Sir David Attenborough As A Young Man, Late 1950s
Annette Kellerman Promotes Women's Right To Wear A Fitted One-Piece Bathing. She Was Arrested For Indecency (1907)
British Soldiers (Interrupted During Drag Show Rehearsals By A German Raid) Manning A Bl 6-Inch Mk Vii Naval Gun At Shornemead Fort, England In 1940
The professor explained that many important photography historians have also traced where these images circulated, who would have seen them, and in what context: “did they have captions? Were they shown in newspapers, or in more spectacular settings like lantern slide presentations, or through a stereoscope which produced a 3D effect for the viewer? Were they used by the government for the purposes of surveillance, or by activists to make claims for social change?”
Grand Central Terminal, NYC, The Sun Can't Shine Through Like That Now Due To The Surrounding Tall Buildings. 1929
Coal Miners Coming Up A Coal Mine Elevator After A Day Of Work In 1920's Belgium
They were called "cages". I know, I worked at a mine.
Load More Replies...Kapitalism exploiting poor people. They worked so hard for little money and died from lung disease while others were sitting on their fat asses counting money. Heartbreaking and disgusting.
Yep, it still happens. We've just outsourced it to child labor in the Democratic Republic of the Congo for cobalt for our electronics. It's still capitalism exploiting poor people.
Load More Replies...Not all "humans" are horrible. That would include those poor working men!
Load More Replies...The way they are packed in there makes me anxious and a bit claustrophobic. How much worse was it down in the mine?
Jesus they are packed in like sardines in a time. Health and safety of today would go ballistic
The worst thing about that pic, is that letting the guys crowd together while standing up and more comfortable, would have been a more efficient use of the space. It's needless discomfort and humiliation!
Load More Replies...Perhaps this was a great step forward from a bucket and a rope. Everyone got out quickly. Just hopeful that this was not as horrible as it looks.
Now I get how they determine the max capacity of elevators. Example, max capacity is 700kg or 21 people, me thinking how on earth you can fit 21 people in the 1.5 square meter elevator...
Couldn't they get just as many or more in if they'd been standing? Or is crouching to protect them if the cage falls?
These poor men were treated like animals - not even given the comfort of standing up after a hard working shift, as this would be "wasting space". By squatting down, more workers could be squeezed onto the lift. Disgusting.
I wonder how long their lungs held out. The air above wasn't great because of the coal used too.
Their families live around the mines and in squalor . Sad Times for tough people.
One of the main reasons to end this atrocious industry, no human should have to endure these conditions.
Looking at the filth from the mining on the outside of them makes me cringe at what their lungs and innards must have become.
It’s bad enough being underground but this is almost a coffin underground
Italian colliers in Belgium (slavery in European mines was abolished in 1872) ... https://falkirklocalhistory.club/organisations/free-colliers/
I've not seen a mine elevator like that before... very harsh way to make a crust/earn a living. I only really know about the mining that happened here in the UK...
they had wooden clogs in Belgium. They probably had wooden clogs in a lot of countries
Load More Replies...Today In 1945, The Auschwitz Death Camp Was Discovered And Liberated By The Red Army
“Other photography historians are curious about how photography was used as a fine art form and about how artists like Julia Margaret Cameron, F. Holland Day, and Berenice Abbott adapted the medium to make photographs that were taken as seriously as paintings and sculptures from the same period.”
More recently, there has been an interest among photography historians in the social life of photographs. “It focuses less on the artists who made the images and more on the people who are in them. These historians ask how photographs might be used to claim rights, like citizenship, or to protest social and political injustices,” the professor explained and named some important figures who used images for social justice: “Photographers like Lewis Hine, Raja Deen Dayal, James van der Zee, and later Roy DeCarava, Susan Meiselas, and Zanele Muholi.”
A Boy's Reaction Staring At A TV Screen For The First Time (1948)
American Troops Treat A Wounded Dog On Orote Pennisula. W.Eugene Smith. 1944
Female Snipers Of The 3rd Shock Army, 1st Belorussian Front, 775 Confirmed Kills, Germany, May 1945
When asked how photography historians determine the date, context, and the participants of the particular photograph if there are no apparent indications, Gabrielle said that most photography historians rely on their technical knowledge of photography to date images that are “orphaned" from their captions.
“We examine the photographic print—its dimensions, the quality of the image, its wear and tear—to determine what kind of camera or printing technique was used. Daguerreotypes produce a mirrored surface, a high level of detail and contrast, but could only be made at very small scales, for instance, while salt prints could be much larger, and printed on paper, but sacrificed a level of detail.”
Lockheed Martin Employee Sally Wadsworth Working On The Fuselage Of A P-38 Lightning In California In 1944
JFK & Bill Clinton Greeting At The White House, In 1963
Arikara Warrior 'Bear’s Belly' - North Dakota, USA - Photo By Edward Curtis (1909)
Turns out that “early Kodak cameras were the first widely available and cheap mass-produced cameras in North America, introduced in 1888,” Gabrielle said and added that they have particular prints that produce a circular image.
“Determining the context in which an image from the past circulated can be much trickier. Historians often have to look to archives of illustrated newspapers to see if photographs were reproduced there, and often with photographs made for press agencies, like Magnum or Black Star, stamps and captions are included on the back to indicate where the image was seen.”
An Undercover Police Officer On Duty. New York, Brooklyn, 1 July 1969
San Francisco's Iconic Cliff House, Shortly Before It Was Destroyed By Fire In 1907
Geologist Thomas Griffith Taylor And Meteorologist Charles Wright In The Entrance Of An Ice Grotto. Terra Nova Expedition, Ross Island, 5 January 1911. Photo Taken By Herbert Ponting
However, in the case of private or domestic images, “like portraits, family photo albums, passport photographs, or class photographs,” the professor said that we might not ever know everything we want to know about who is in the photographs, or what context in which they were made. Having said that, she added that “we can use our imaginative capacities to speculate and make educated guesses.”
Visiting Quarantined Family And Friends At Ullevål Hospital, Oslo - Photo By Anders Beer Wilse - 1905
Just like many people, myself included, who visited family in care centres during COVID. Heartbreaking.
A U.S. Marine Rescues Two Vietnamese Children During A Gun Battle At The City Of Hue, During The Tet Offensive Of The Vietnam War - 1968
A Woman Overlooking A Snowy Mountain Pass In The Pyrenees Mountains, France - 1956
According to Gabrielle, as digital photography has become accessible to almost everyone through smart phones, we have begun to value historical photographic processes, “especially ones that have been made obsolete, more highly. Especially the processes that resulted in one-of-a-kind images, like photograms, daguerreotypes, cyanotypes, and Polaroids, because they seem unique and irreproducible.”
Homecoming, A British Soldier With His 8 Month Old Daughter As He Arrives At The Docks From Overseas 1945
A German World War II Prisoner Is Released By The Soviet Union And Reunited With His 12-Year-Old Daughter, Who Has Not Seen Him Since Infancy. 1956
Mother And Baby Of Family Of Nine Living In Field On U.S. Route 70 Near The Tennessee River, March 1936
“In many ways, the more we know about the history of photography, the more we seem to find parallels between now and the past. We might worry that there are 'too many images' in the world through platforms like Instagram, TikTok, or even in the millions of photographs uploaded to Flickr and Facebook each day, but if we look back at some of the earliest cartoons and caricatures about the invention of photography in France in 1839, we see the same panic surrounded the first viable and publicly available photographic method, too,” Gabrielle concluded.
Cetshwayo, King Of The Zulu Who Defeated The British At The Battle Of Isandlwana, 1878
Shepherds Listening To Music Records, Azerbaijan 1939
The World's Last Commercial Ocean-Going Sailing Ship - The Pamir - Rounding Cape Horn, 1949
Navajo Riders In The Canyon De Chelly, Arizona. 1904, Photo Taken By Edward Curtis
A Native American Man Looking Over The Newly Completed Transcontinental Railroad In Nevada, 1869
One Of The Many Selfies That Emperor Nicholas II Took Throughout His Life, (1868-1918)
Frozen Niagara Falls, 1911
All Of Them Pick Shrimp At The Peerless Oyster Co. Photo Was Taken While Bosses Were At Dinner As They Refused To Permit The Children To Be In Photos. Out Of 60 Workers, 15 Were Apparently Under 12 Yrs Old. Bay St. Louis, Miss, March 1911
Oldest Austrian Soldier Of Ww1, A 79-Year-Old Gaspar Wallnöfer, Veteran Of Habsburg Campaigns In Italy In 1848 And 1866, September 1917
Last Sword Duel In History In France, 1967 Between The Mayor Of Marseille And The Socialist Party Candidate For Presidency
A Rare Photo Of A Traffic Accident In The Netherlands More Than 100 Years Ago. The Photo Was Taken In 1914
An Outdoor Hockey Game In Sweden Is Cut Short, 1959
Acrobats Balance On Top Of The Empire State Building (1934)
A Babushka Keeps The Ears Of Her Grandson Warm As He Takes An Oath Of Enlistment For The Russian Army. Volgograd, 1994. Photo Taken By Nikolai Ignatiev
Anti British Propaganda, Japan 1941
Rome When It Became The Capital Of The Kingdom Of Italy (1871)
we have say here "eh una volta qui era tutta campagna" = "once here it was only open land" aaand this picture is absolutely on point since near the Colosseo now there are so many buildings (mostly are offices) and considered that the 90% of us lives so far away from the center... man this city is huge lmao and in the 1871 it was barely what it is now
Eddie "The Eagle" Edwards Soars Above A Roaring Crowd At The 1988 Winter Olympics. He Finished Last
Survivors Of 1972 Of The Infamous Andes Plane Crash. The Passengers Resorted To Cannibalism To Survive 72 Days In The Snow
Look at the right, right next to the chair. You can see human remains on the floor... Caitlin Doughty did a great episode on this story.
FDR Using Help To Get Out Of His Car, One Of The Few Photos That Show His Paralytic Illness, Journalists And Photographers Avoided Showing The President In This Weak State Especially During WWII, Taken In The 24th Of September 1932
Iron Workers Pose For A Photo Atop The North Tower Of The World Trade Center, 1973
Conrad O'brien-Ffrench Greets A Bear. Having Spent His Youth As A Mountie, Surviving The First World War And Serving As An Mi6 Agent In The Second World War, He Was Known To Welcome Danger. Banff National Park, 1950. Photo Taken By Rosalie French
The Airship Le Jaune Flying Past The Eiffel Tower, In Paris, France. (11/20/1903)
Las Vegas Police Facing Mike Tyson After He'd Just Bitten Holyfield's Ear Off (1996)
Young Punks In Communist Hungary - Budapest, 1982
A Ukrainian-American Family Celebrates The Death Of Stalin, 1953
When people celebrate your death by dancing in the street and giving out free food, that's when you know you really were the worst.
Soviet Tanks Interrupt Young Couple Wedding. Soviet Invasion To Czechoslovakia
Don't think that "interrupt wedding" is correct. It happened during the night and early morning hours. The armies of USSR, Poland, East Germany, Hungary and Bulgaria crossed the borders of Czechoslovakia on 20th August arround 11:00 PM. My father remembers the noise of tanks arround 2:AM. So, sorry, I doubt they interrupt wedding during its process. Possibly it was staying there since night. And maybe the wedding didn't happened that day at all because nobody knew what is going to happen. Some people thought at first that it is begging of another war.
A Romanian Soldier Giving A Sign Of Victory After The 1989 Revolution, Having Removed The Communist Insignia From His Headwear
Berlin, 1923. Less Than Five Years After The End Of The Great War, Germany Economy Lies In Ruins. A Disabled War Veteran Begs In The Street Dressed In His Pre-War Dunkelblau Waffenrock
Sir Richard Owen Standing Next To A Moa Skeleton And Holding The First Bone Fragment Belonging To A Moa Ever Found. 1879
I googled it and now I can't stop thinking about how this looks like Kevin from up
Photograph Entitled "Wait For Me, Daddy". It Shows A Child Running To His Father, A Canadian Soldier, Before Being Deployed During The Second World War. Behind You Can See His Mother. October 1, 1940
I work right where this was taken. There is a statue commemorating this.
Little John F. Kennedy Jr. Waiting For His Dad, President John F. Kennedy To Land At Camp David, Maryland In October 1963. Jfk Was Assassinated The Very Next Month
Soviet Soldier Carrying The Head Of A Statue Of Hitler, Berlin 1945
Firefighters Battle A Blaze In Montreal, 1889
Burial At Sea On The Uss Intrepid, November 1944
Ethnic Cambodian Guerilla Fighter Danh Son Huol Is Carried To An Improvised Operating Room In A Mangrove Swamp After He Was Wounded By American Bombing. Ca Mau Peninsula, 15 September 1970. Photo Taken By Vo Anh Khanh
Mounted Cop Flies Down Tremont Street, Boston 1920s - Photo By Leslie Jones
A Family Of Migratory Fruit Workers From Texas During Cherry-Picking Season. Berrien County, Michigan, July 1940
A Young Private Waits On The Beach During The Marine Landing At Da Nang, 1965
A Student Protester Gives The V For Victory Sign In Front Of Chinese Soldiers Of The Pla. Tiananmen Square, 1 June 1989. Photo Taken By Peter Charlesworth
Children Eating The Half A Liter Of Supplementary Food Per Day Received From The Interkerkelijk Bureau Voor Noodvoedselvoorziening En Kinderuitzending During The Hunger Winter, The Hague, Netherlands, 1944/45, Photo By Menno Huizinga
Police Officer Wearing A Face Mask During The London Smog In 1952
John Meintz, An American Farmer Tarred And Feathered By A Mob For His German Heritage And Allegedly Not Supporting War Bond Drives, 1918
Bob Dylan & Muhammad Ali, Madison Square Gardens, New York, 1975
An Aerial Photo Of The Kowloon Walled City, Hong Kong Taken In 1989
Here's a series of photos on the life there. Pretty enlightening. https://www.businessinsider.com/kowloon-walled-city-photos-2015-2
A British Army Bomb Disposal Specialist Approaches A Suspect Vehicle In Belfast, 1970s
Czechoslovak Man Posing With Half Loaf Of Bread In Front Of Banner "The Meaning Of The Policy Of The Communist Party Of Czechoslovakia - Paradise For Humans" Communist Czechoslovakia, Probably 1960
The Guards Of Maharajah Ram Singh III In The Royal Palace Of Jaipur. India, 1858
Survivors Of Hmas Armidale On A Raft After Their Ship Was Sunk By Japanese Air Attack, December 1942. A Catalina Flying Boat Later Took This Photo But Was Unable To Assist Due To Rough Seas. The Survivors Were Never Found Again
Israeli Soldier Taking A Glass Of Water From The Jordan River After The Six Day War, On His Left Arm Is A Serial Number From The Holocaust. July 1967
The Result Of Firefighting In Extreme Winter Conditions. The Remains Of The Eureka Building In Chicago. 1920
Dog Being Posed By A German Soldier, 1940
The Beatles Pose With “The Greatest”, Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali), At The Fifth Street Gym On Miami Beach, 1964
A Woman Is Humiliated For Having Had Personal Relations With The Germans. In The Montelimar Area, France, French Civilians Shave Her Head As Punishment. August 29, 1944
Soldier Stands Besides His M60 Machine Gun, Which Is Mounted On The Steps Of The U.S. Capitol To Deter Rioters From Entering The Building During The Martin Luther King Jr. Assassination Riots In Washington D.C. (April 1968)
A Chechen Man Prays During The First Battle Of Grozny, January 1995. The Flame In The Background Is Coming From A Gas Pipeline Which Was Hit By Shrapnel
Extraordinary. He's got such a look of peace on his face, despite what's going on around him.
American Wwi Veterans At A Reunion, 1978
Korean Children Play Near A Church In North Pyongan Province, Japanese Korea (Present-Day North Korea) - 1930s
Lee Harvey Oswald, The Assassin Of John F. Kennedy, Being Shot By Jack Ruby On November 24, 1963 While Being Escorted By Dallas Police
I'm sure this image is seared into the minds of Americans who watched it happen on live television.
1858 Picture Of The Last Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah II. Fun Fact: Persian Word For Mongol Is “Mughal”, It’s Often Overlooked That India Fell Under Mongol Rule. First Emperor Was A Direct Descendant Of Genghis Khan
Their Empire had been in decline for generations, even before the British achieved domination. Even so, his son was summarily executed as a show of force and vengeance.
George H.w. Bush Takes A Toboggan Ride With Arnold Schwarzenegger At Camp David. 1991
"The Weightless Cat"-Experiment, Performed Inside The Cockpit Of An F-94c To Test The Effect Of Sub-Gravity Forces On The Body, 8 February 1958
American Soldier Wearing The Crown Of The Holy Roman Empire In A Cave In Siegen, Germany, On April 3, 1945
The Weathered Face Of Norwegian Polar Explorer Tryggve Gran - 1923
Fidel Castro Visiting The Great Wall Of China, 1995
Pre-Dreadnought Battleship Sms Kaiser Friedrich III Leads The German Home Fleet, 1901
President John F. Kennedy And Ivory Coast President Felix Houphouet-Boigny In Bubble-Top Limousine, 22nd Of May 1962
U.S. Soldier: Sgt. Ronald Payne, 21, Of Atlanta, Georgia, Emerges From A Viet Cong Tunnel While Holding A Silencer-Equipped Revolver (January 21, 1967)
Imperial Japanese Soldiers Climb The Great Wall Of China, 1937
Emperor Of Japan Hirohito And Empress Nagako With Their Children And Grandchildren - 1970s
Empress Nagano seems to be suffering from lymphoedema or even lipoedema, judging by Her arms. Painful and incurable at the time. I’m sorry.
A Red Army Soldier Firing From A Bathtub During The Battle Of Stalingrad, 1942
"Kombat" Heroic Image Of A Soviet Political Commissar Of The 220th Infantry Regiment Calling Soldiers To An Assault, Eastern Front, In Soviet Ukraine, 12 July 1942. It Has Been Said That The Subject Of This Photo Died Minutes After It Was Taken
American Deserters Being Publicly Humiliated In Florient, France On November 5, 1918. During Wwi, 2,657 U.S. Servicemen Were Convicted Of Desertion, With 24 Being Sentenced To Death; All Of The Condemned Were Instead Commuted To Prison Terms By President Woodrow Wilson
A German Prisoner Of War Rebuilding Stalingrad, 1947
Red Army Infantry Marching Through The Main Street Of Kiev, Ukraine, Following The Liberation Of The City From German Forces - 1943
I absolutely loved this, the photo stories about historical stuff is always so interesting to me
I remember when we got our first colour telly and also when channel 4 started, f**k me I feel older writing that than I am and that's old enough!!!!!!
My dad talks about getting his first tv, but it was in a country town in Australia, so they were quite behind the times. Australia introduced tvs just in time for the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. My dad was born that year, but his family didn't get a tv until years later.
Load More Replies...Many were examples of what a sad society we are. Others showed the bravery and strength of many people. An educational and eye opening collection.
Editorial standards seem to be slipping. There are many excellent pix here but they cover six or seven diffeent themes or topics, and throwing them holus=bolus into a single undifferentiated post dimishes their meaning and robs them of their impact. Poor showing, folks!
I absolutely loved this, the photo stories about historical stuff is always so interesting to me
I remember when we got our first colour telly and also when channel 4 started, f**k me I feel older writing that than I am and that's old enough!!!!!!
My dad talks about getting his first tv, but it was in a country town in Australia, so they were quite behind the times. Australia introduced tvs just in time for the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. My dad was born that year, but his family didn't get a tv until years later.
Load More Replies...Many were examples of what a sad society we are. Others showed the bravery and strength of many people. An educational and eye opening collection.
Editorial standards seem to be slipping. There are many excellent pix here but they cover six or seven diffeent themes or topics, and throwing them holus=bolus into a single undifferentiated post dimishes their meaning and robs them of their impact. Poor showing, folks!