We may read volumes upon volumes of history books and make our teachers proud. But there’s nothing more all-telling than real pictures that document wonders of the past. With Joseph Niepce’s camera obscura used in 1827, humans realized that capturing fleeting moments and preserving them was possible. And they never looked back.
This time, we are taking you on a heartfelt roller coaster that will take us back to the past. From the image of the nine kings of Europe photographed together for the first and only time to the snap of workers painting the Eiffel tower, these are one-of-a-kind moments.
In an unstaged manner, they reveal what genuinely made humans proud, moved them to tears, or left them heartbroken. Sometimes, the pics just show what kept them busy during the day. Fasten your seat belts, relax, and enjoy the time travel.
#1 In 1969, When Black Americans Were Still Prevented From Swimming Alongside Whites, Mr. Rogers Decided To Invite Officer Clemmons To Join Him And Cool His Feet In A Pool, Breaking A Well-Known Color Barrier
#2 Incredible Photograph Of A German Soldier Going Against Direct Orders To Help A Young Boy Cross The Newly Formed Berlin Wall After Being Separated From His Family, 1961
#3 Charles Thompson Greets His New Classmates At Public School No. 27 In September 1954, Less Than Four Months After The Supreme Court Ruled That Racial Segregation Was Unconstitutional. Charles Was The Only African-American Child In The School. Photo By Richard Stacks For The Baltimore Sun
To find out just the meaning behind these historical photographs in a broader sense, We reached out to Marcelo Guimarães Lima, a visual artist (drawing, painting, printmaking), writer and teacher. In his art, Marcelo employs figurative and abstract approaches to explore questions related to personal, historical, social, and political issues of our diverse life-worlds.
Marcelo explained that the birth of photography changed the image of the world in a profound way because “it did change the world for us, image viewers and image producers.”
According to the artist, the historical photographs that eternalized these significant moments of the past show us both permanence and change: “The change of circumstances (that can also, at critical times, change the subjects), the permanence of challenges and struggles related both to the short and the long durations and processes.”
#4 Princess Diana Shakes Hands With An Aids Patient Without Gloves, 1991
#5 A Policeman In San Francisco Scolds A Man For Not Wearing A Mask During The 1918 Influenza Pandemic, 1918
#6 Jewish Prisoners After Being Liberated From A Death Train, 1945
Marcelo also explained that ambiguities of photography also reflect the ambiguities of situations. “The rhetoric of photography is that of a mediated immediacy and its effects are also related to the context of ideas expressed or directed also by the linguistic context (captions, text, etc).”
Asa result, it all comes down to the circumstances on which the interpretation of the message relies. It also changes it. For example, “’The Queen of England as a war mechanic during WWII’ is a now a kind of ironic piece, or rather, the inherent irony of the image/message is what comes to the fore now,” Marcelo said.
#7 Members Of Dutch Resistance Celebrate The News Of Adolf Hitler’s Death, April 1945
#8 Margaret Hamilton And The Handwritten Navigation Software She And Her Mit Team Produced For The Apollo Project, 1969
#9 Statue Of David By Michelangelo, Encased In Bricks To Prevent Damage From Bombs, During World War 2
The history of photography is as incredible as history itself. After all, without cameras, these historical snaps wouldn’t exist.
But it turns out that the birth of photography was quite recent (in a historical context), that is, less than two hundred years ago.It all started in 1826 with the photographic process invented by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, which he used to make the earliest known surviving photograph from nature. Known as heliography, the process refers to a wireless telegraph that signals by flashes of sunlight (generally using Morse code) reflected by a mirror.
Heliography was followed by the daguerreotypy method of photography, developed by Louis Daguerre, who made daguerrotypy sixty to eighty times quicker than Niepce’s initial method. In Great Britain, Henry Fox Talbot was also experimenting with talbotypy, which used paper coated with silver iodide.
#10 An American Soldier Cradles A Wounded Japanese Boy And Shelters Him From The Rain In The Cockpit Of An Airplane During The Battle Of Saipan While Waiting To Transport The Youngster To A Field Hospital. July, 1944
#11 A Serbian Soldier Sleeps With His Father Who Came To Visit Him On The Front Line Near Belgrade, 1914/1915
#12 Louis Armstrong Playing For His Wife, Egypt, 1961
Only in 1889 did the world welcome the very first roll film pioneered by George Eastman. In 1913, these photographical inventions were followed by the very first 35mm camera engineered by German inventor Oskar Barnack.
1957 was the year of the first digital camera, which was a binary digital version of an existing camera that allowed the transfer of images into a digital computer.
Today, you can no longer imagine the internet and social media without photos (what would we do without cat pics?!). But it wasn’t until 1992 that Tim Berners-Lee published the very first photograph on the web. It was a picture of a comedy band called Les Horribles Cernettes, which was a house project at CERN Laboratory Switzerland, where Tim was developing the World Wide Web.
#13 Anne Frank’s Father Otto, Revisiting The Attic Where They Hid From The Nazis. He Was The Only Surviving Family Member (1960)
#14 A Man Rides A Bus In Durban, Meant For White Passengers Only, In Resistance To South Africa’s Apartheid Policies, 1986
#15 Ruby Bridges, The First African-American To Attend A White Elementary School In The Deep South, 1960
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#16 Young Queen Elizabeth As A Mechanic During WW2 (C. 1939)
#17 A Man Arrested For Cross-Dressing Emerging From A Police Van, New York, 1939
#18 Albert Einstein, His Secretary Helen (Left), And Daughter Margaret (Right) Becoming U.S. Citizens To Avoid Returning To Nazi Germany, 1940
#19 Soldiers Returning Home From WWII, 1945
#20 Freddie Mercury With His Mother, 1947
#21 When Nazis Asked Lepa Radic Who Were Her ‘Accomplices’ Before They Hanged Her She Responded: ‘You’ll Know Them When They Come To Avenge Me.’ Young Serbian Girl Was Hanged At The Age Of 17 Near Gradiska In 1943. During The Battle Of Kozara, She Lost Her Father, Brother (15) And Her Uncle
#22 David Isom, 19, Broke The Color Line In A Segregated Pool In Florida On June 8, 1958, Which Resulted In Officials Closing The Facility
#23 A German Soldier Returns Home Only To Find His Family No Longer There. Frankfurt, 1946
#24 WWI. A Canadian Soldier Tries To Comfort A Little Belgian Baby, Who Was Hurt And Whose Mother Was Killed By An Artillery Shell. November 1918
#25 May 20, 1910: The Nine Kings Of Europe Photographed Together For The First And Only Time
#26 A Hired Reader Reads To Cigar Makers Hard At Work In Cuban Cigar Factory (Ca. 1900-1910). Because Many Cigar Factory Employees Were Illiterate Lectors Were Hired To Read Novels, Poetry, Nonfiction Works, And Newspapers Determined By Consensus
#27 “The Drunk Basket.” In The 1960s, Bars In Istanbul Would Hire Someone To Carry Drunk People Back To Their Homes
#28 Russian Inmate Points An Identifying And Accusing Finger At A Nazi Guard Who Was Especially Cruel Towards The Prisoners In Buchenwald Camp
#29 A French Women Welcomes An American Soldier Two Days After Liberation. Strasbourg, France, 22 November 1944
#30 September 3, 1967: The Day Sweden Switched From Driving On The Left To The Right Side Of The Road
#31 7’3” (221cm) Jakob Nacken, The Tallest Nazi Soldier Ever Chatting With 5’3” (160cm) Canadian Corporal Bob Roberts After Surrendering To Him Near Calais, France In September Of 1944
#32 18-Year-Old Keshia Thomas Protects A Fallen Man, Believed To Be Associated With The Ku Klux Klan From An Angry Mob Of Anti-Clan Protestors. Ann Arbor, Michigan USA. 1996 By Mark Brunner
#33 Rosa Parks’s Booking Photo Following Her February 1956 Arrest
#34 Here Is How An Ukrainian Immigrant Celebrated Stalin’s Death, 1953
#35 Into The Jaws Of Death, 6th Of June, 1944
#36 Crowd In Times Square, New York City Celebrating The Surrender Of Germany, May 7th, 1945
#37 Fire And Fury: B-25s Are Pictured Flying Past Mount Vesuvius In Italy As Lava And Ash Spews From The Top Of The Volcano. The Eruption Killed 57 As It Destroyed The Village Of San Sebastiano And San Giorg In March 1944 While Allied Forces Were Battling For Supremacy In The Skies
#38 Nikola Tesla, The Last Photo Ever Of The Famous Scientist, 1st Jan 1943
#39 A Nurse With A Sick Child During Smallpox Epidemic, Wrocław, Poland, 1963
#40 Ruth Lee, A Hostess At A Chinese Restaurant, Flies A Chinese Flag So She Isn’t Mistaken For Japanese When She Sunbathes On Her Days Off In Miami. Dec. 15, 1941
#41 Inside Of An Airplane In 1930
#42 Soviet Citizens Look At The “Wall Of Sorrow”, Honoring The Hundreds Of Thousands Of People Killed By Stalinism. In 1988, The Soviet Government Allowed Information Regarding The Victims Of Stalin’s Great Purge To Become Public
#43 “Human Fly” George Willig Scales The Exterior Of The World Trade Center’s South Tower In 1977. Completing The Climb In 3.5 Hours, He Was Arrested At The Top After Signing Several Autographs, And Was Fined $1.10 By The City – A Penny For Each Floor He Passed
#44 Portrait Of Arctic Explorer Peter Freuchen And His Wife, Fashion Illustrator Dagmar Cohn, 1947
#45 Allied Soldiers Mock Hitler Atop His Balcony At The Reich Chancellery, 1945
#46 Teenage Dating In Diner, 1950s, The States
#47 Mobsters Hide Their Faces At Al Capone’s Trial 1931
#48 Nuclear Explosion Less Than One Millisecond After Detonation (1952)
#49 Nintendo’s First Headquarters In Kyoto, Japan (1889)
#50 A Member Of The Ku Klux Klan Stands Behind A Police Officer For Protection, After A Mob Surrounded His Klan Rally In Austin Texas, 1983
#51 Three Young Russian Women And A Little Girl Recently Liberated From A Slave-Labor Camp By The U.S. Army Lay Flowers At The Feet Of Four Dead American Soldiers, April 18, 1945, Hilden, Germany
#52 “Eyes Of Hate”, A Photograph Of Goebbels After He Finds Out His Photographer Was Jewish, Geneva , September 1933
#53 ‘big Nims’ Of The United States 3rd Battalion, 366th Infantry, Laughing At The Sight Of His Comrades With Gas Masks On, 1918
#54 Workers Painting The Eiffel Tower, 1924
#55 German SS Guards, Exhausted From Their Forced Labour Clearing The Bodies Of The Dead At Bergen-Belsen, Are Allowed A Brief Rest By British Soldiers But Are Forced To Take It By Lying Face Down In One Of The Empty Mass Graves, 1945
#56 A Game Of Human Chess St Petersburg Then Leningrad Russia Circa 1924
#57 Wedding Bands That Were Removed From Holocaust Victims Before They Were Executed
#58 Young Angela Merkel Having A Schnaps With Fishermen On The Island Of Rügen During Her First Mp Campain In Summer 1990
#59 Union And Confederate Soldiers Shaking Hands At The 1913 Gettysburg Reunion
#60 A Woman Mourns After The Us Navy Downs An Iranian Passenger Jet On 3 July 1988, Carrying 290 Civilians Including 66 Children
#61 Babies Who Lost Their Parents During The Vietnam War Being Airlifted Back To The United States For Adoption, 1975
#62 Arnold Schwarzenegger Seeing NYC For The First Time (1968)
#63 Only One Of Two Photographs In Existence Of The Us Supreme Court In Session. Cameras Are Forbidden In The Supreme Court, But This Photograph Was Taken By A Young Woman Who Concealed Her Small Camera In Her Handbag, Cutting A Hole Through Which The Lens Peeped, 1937
#64 View Of Boston, The Oldest Surviving Aerial Photograph Ever Taken. October 13th, 1860
#65 Indian Soldiers Arriving In France, World War I, 1914
#66 The Apollo 14 Landing Capsule (1971)
#67 What Is Now The Fully Developed Las Vegas Strip, 1955
#68 Construction Of The Golden Gate Bridge, Circa 1934
#69 The Imprint Of A Mitsubishi Kamikaze Zero Along The Side Of H.M.S Sussex. 1945
#70 The Waiting Room Of Chicago’s Union Station (1943)
#71 The Uniform Of Archduke Franz Ferdinand From 1914, Whose Assassination Triggered The Outbreak Of World War I
#72 A Coca Cola Advertisement Made By Spreading Grains For Pigeons In Saint Mark’s Square, Venice, 1960
#73 Unit Control Desk Of The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, April 18, 1983
#74 The First Successful Flight By The Wright Brothers At Kitty Hawk, NC (1903)
#75 The Cologne Cathedral Stands Amidst The Ruins Of The City After Allied Bombings (1944). The Cathedral Suffered Fourteen Direct Hits By Aerial Bombs During The War But Did Not Collapse
#76 Motel Manager James Brock Pours Muriatic Acid In The Monson Motor Lodge Swimming Pool, To Get Black Swimmers Out Of The Pool. June 18, 1964
#77 Abraham Lincoln’s Hearse As It Passes An Ornamental Arch At 12th Street In Chicago, Il (1865)
#78 Eniac: The First General-Purpose Digital Computer (C. 1947-1955)
#79 The Walled City Of Kowloon (1989)
#80 A US Marine Gives A Cigarette To A Japanese Soldier Buried In The Sand. Iwo Jima, 1945
#81 Pelé Takes A Break During The Filming Of Escape To Victory – In The Stadium Of A Jewish Team Filled With Nazi Flags In A Communist Country In 1981
#82 Nicholas II Of Russia With The Family (Left To Right): Olga, Maria, Nicholas II, Alexandra Fyodorovna, Anastasia, Alexei, And Tatiana. Livadiya, Crimea, 1913
#83 Soviet Peasants Listen To The Radio For The First Time, 1928
#84 18 Year-Old Muhammad Ali Stands Alone At The 1960 Rome Olympics
#85 The Mcdonald Brothers In Front Of The Not Yet Opened First McDonald’s, November 1948, San Bernadino, CA
#86 The Guinness Brewery, Dublin, 1910
#87 Colored Photo Of Russian Peasant Girls (1909)
#88 At 4:31 Am, An Unauthorized Photo Taken Of Stalin Inside Of The Kremlin Shows The Very Moment He Was Informed That Germany Had Began Their Invasion Of The Soviet Union. It Was Taken By Komsomolskaya Pravda, Editor In Chief. He Was Ordered To Destroy It, But Instead Saved It. June 22, 1941
#89 Earliest Known Photo Of Chernobyl Disaster, Taken By Powerplant’s Photographer, Dawn Of April 26th, 1986
#90 The Lottery Used By The Selective Service To Determine Who Would Be Drafted For Vietnam First. In Each Capsule Is A Day Of The Year, Determining The Order Of Draftees By Their Birthday. Washington D.C. 1969
#91 JFK’s Funeral At The Capitol. November 1963
#92 Hiroshima Before And After The Atomic Bombing On August 6th, 1945
#93 Two Homeless Men Squat In The Shadow Of The Recently Completed World Trade Center In 1975…
#94 “The Eyes Of The World Are Upon You”. June 5th, 1944. One Day Before D-Day
#95 New Map Of Europe Displayed Outside Philadelphia’s Independence Hall After WWI (1918)
#96 New Yorkers Stop To Watch The “Seinfeld” Finale, Times Square, 1998
#97 French Troops With War-Torn Flag, 1917
#98 The First Public Demonstration Of A Computer Mouse, Graphical User Interface, Windowed Computing, Hypertext And Word Processing, 1968
#99 Boy Standing In Front Of Fallen Statue Of Lenin, Ethiopia, 1991
#100 Lyndon B. Johnson Yelling At The Pilots Of A Nearby Plane To Cut Their Engines So That John F. Kennedy Could Speak As Kennedy Is Seen Trying To Calm Him Down. Taken During The 1960 Presidential Campaign In Amarillo, Texas
#101 Black Man Going Into The ‘Colored’ Entrance Of A Mississippi Theater (C. 1939)
#102 Rasputin And His Followers, 1914
#103 President George Hw Bush Gazes At The Capitol In Helicopter After Leaving Clinton Inauguration. 1992
#104 John Lennon And Yoko Ono Bought A Large Billboard In Times Square In 1969 Declaring That ‘War Is Over If You Want It’
#105 Street Scene In Antwerp, Belgium, Showing Citizens Turning Out For Celebration A Few Hours After The Germans Surrendered And An End Of World War I. 11th November 1918
#106 An Anti-Communist Revolutionary Holds A Molotov Cocktail Behind His Back During The 1956 Hungarian Revolution
#107 Hitler Reacts To A Kiss From An Excited American Women At The 1936 Olympic Games
#108 Washington D.C The Morning After The Assassination Of Martin Luther King, 5 April 1968
#109 105mm Shells From An Allied Bombardment All Fired In A Single Day On German Lines, 1916
#110 Fidel Castro Laughing At A Newspaper Headline While Visiting New York In 1959
#111 Robert H. Goddard And His Invention, The First Liquid Rocket (1926)
#112 The Fenelon Place Elevator, One Of The Shortest And Steepest Railroads In The World
#113 A Soldier From The Hampshire Regiment Engulfed In Smoke During A Chemical Weapon Training Exercise, 1941
#114 Vladimir Kosma Zworykin Shows Off His Cathode Ray Television (1934)
#115 Soviet Soldiers, On Their Backs, Launch A Volley Of Bullets At Enemy Aircraft In June Of 1943
#116 Richard Nixon Waves Goodbye As He Boards A Helicopter After Resigning The Presidency Earlier That Day (Aug. 9, 1974)
#117 Ham The Chimpanzee Preparing For His Mercury-Redstone 2 Test Flight, Conducted On January 31, 1961
#118 The Old And New Alignments Of Pennsylvania Route 61 Following The Centralia Mine Fire
