Seriously, I’m on my way. I’ve been here for hours. Here being the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Online Catalog. They’ve got 60 albums of photographs, including,
“…approximately four thousand [panoramic] images featuring American cityscapes, landscapes, and group portraits … agricultural life; beauty contests; disasters; … schools and college campuses, sports, and transportation. The images date from 1851 to 1991 and depict scenes in all fifty states … the District of Columbia … more than twenty foreign countries and a few U.S. territories ….”
There are actually, as of today, 4239 images in this group, and I’ve barely scratched the surface. Boston Harbor in 1876, a 1902 NYC skyline, San Francisco in ruins in 1906, Miami, Springfield, St. Louis and everywhere else. I could spend the whole day in this one album.
Here’s downtown Austin, TX in 1910.
(Click for the full 2457 x 420, or go to the catalog for the huge 4066 x 695 version)
There are also,
“… about 7,000 different images made during the American Civil War (1861-1865) and in its immediate aftermath. The images were scanned from the Prints and Photographs Division’s collection of original glass plate negatives.”
There are tons of forts, houses, bridges and battlefields, all fascinating, but what stopped me in my tracks were the 5 pictures of the “Price, Birch and Co.” slave pens in Alexandria, Virginia. Photographs of a slave dealer’s pens. In my country. Less than 150 years ago.
And, my favorite,
“The Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii Collection features color photographic surveys of the vast Russian Empire made between ca. 1905 and 1915.”
That’s right, color. There are tons of pictures in here of the countryside, gardens, churches, etc, but I especially like the pictures of the people. These are people from across Russia, from city folk to yurt dwellers, living in the years between the Revolution of 1905 and the Revolution of 1917. One of my favorites:
(click for full picture)
Study of Three Generations, Zlatoust
“A. P. Kalganov poses with his son and granddaughter for a portrait in the industrial town of Zlatoust in the Ural Mountain region of Russia. The son and granddaughter are employed at the Zlatoust Arms Plant–a major supplier of armaments to the Russian military since the early 1800s. Kalganov displays traditional Russian dress and beard styles, while the two younger generations have more Westernized, modern dress and hair styles.” Link
And that’s just 3 of 60 different collections. You also have African-American photographs assembled for the 1900 Paris Exposition, Ansel Adams’ Photographs of Japanese-American internment, Spanish Civil War and World War I posters, and on, and on, and on. I’m happy to pay taxes for stuff like this.