Elvis Presley Photographed by Alfred Wertheimer Recording at RCA Studio 1 in New York on July 2, 1956

“Most of the time, Elvis never even knew I took his picture,” said Alfred Wertheimer, whose intimate and unaffected photographs of the young Elvis Presley on the threshold of superstardom, in 1956. “Elvis was almost laser-focused on whatever he did. So I would wait till he was involved—and Elvis was the kind of person who would be involved every 15 minutes in something else. Whether he’s combing his hair, or buying a ring, or in rehearsal; whether he’s talking to his father about why the plumbing isn’t working and the swimming pool isn’t full, or reassuring his mother that it’s O.K. to take a ride around the block on his motorcycle, or posing with some girls to take snaps by other girls, his life was full of activity.”

The most successful two-sided hit on Billboard’s Top/Hot 100 chart was Elvis Presley’s “Hound Dog”/“Don’t Be Cruel.” One side reached #1 on the chart, the other #2. The history of Presley’s phenomenal dual record began on July 2, 1956, when Elvis entered RCA’s studios in New York City to record two songs for his next single release.

Photographer Alfred Wertheimer, who was in the studio that day, detailed the session in his 1979 photo-journal, Elvis ’56: In the Beginning. According to Wertheimer, after about two hours and 30 takes of “Hound Dog,” the musicians listened to playbacks of the takes that were candidates for the “Hound Dog” master. “The engineer racked take twenty-eight,” remembered Wertheimer. “Elvis left his chair and crouched on the floor, as if listening in a different position was like looking at a subject from a different angle. Again he went into deep concentration, absorbed and motionless … At the end of the song, he slowly rose from his crouch and turned to us with a wide grin, and said, ‘This is the one.’”

Portraits of 20-Year-Old David Bowie in Mime-Like Poses, 1967

“Mime is a marvelous medium,” David Bowie told Melody Maker in 1969. “It requires a lot of concentration on the part of the audience.”

In 1967, Gerald Fearnley photographed David Bowie doing a series of mime-like poses in front of the camera. Fearnley, whose younger brother Derek helped Bowie with his eponymous 1967 album, captured Bowie pre-fame, with many of the negatives later published for the first time in 2016, following Bowie’s death.

“My brother, Derek, known as ‘Dek’, was a musician. He always had his bass guitar with him and played gigs up until he passed away in 2008. But in the 1960s, we were all just starting out with our lives. And by 1966, I had a small home, a wife and three small kids. Dek would often use my place to stay before or after gigs. He would often bring by a fellow musician into our home. No one knew that one of the musicians would turn out to be David Bowie.

“David seemed very serious about what he was doing, he seemed trustworthy. He and my brother would often be in the kitchen writing. He used to play with the children, games of Monopoly or teaching them how to play the penny whistle. David was great with the kids, very pleasant, always polite.

“I had a studio in town, down near Oxford Street, and Dek and his musician friends would come up from time to time. I remember once I was walking either to or from the studio and I heard somebody shout my name from across the street. I looked up and it was David! He had this great big leather coat on, all the way to his ankles. That’s what I remember, he was just an ordinary bloke.

“I don’t remember why I took those photos, probably because I was the only one he knew with a studio and camera. I was as much of a professional photographer as he probably knew back then, but I only did still life photography... I never really followed his career, but my girls all did. They couldn’t believe that he was once just a young kid, sleeping on the sofa and teaching them how to play the theme tune from the TV series The Killing Stones on the penny whistle.”

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22 Amazing Daguerreotype Portraits of People Posing With Their Beloved Pets

Such was not the case in the mid-19th century, when the first-ever widely accessible form of photography, known as the daguerreotype process, made its way to the young United States.

Before this time, it was impossible to know someone’s true appearance unless you met them in person. You could not look back on the faces of your children once they reached adulthood, nor those of your late parents once they were laid to rest. Experiences and happenings were preserved only after hours of effort painting, drawing or writing prose, and even then, with striking imperfection. Daguerreotypes gave the American people the ability to preserve, not merely imagine, their collective history.

The daguerreotype, the first photographic process, was invented by Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre (1787–1851) and spread rapidly around the world after its presentation to the public in Paris in 1839. Exposed in a camera obscura and developed in mercury vapors, each highly polished silvered copper plate is a unique photograph that, when viewed in proper light, exhibits extraordinary detail and three-dimensionality.

Although born in Europe, the daguerreotype was extremely popular in the United States—especially in New York City, where in the late 1850s hundreds of daguerreotypists vied for clients. The most successful artists built lavish portrait studios on the upper floors of buildings on and just off Broadway, and in other major American cities from Boston to San Francisco.

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Taking an Early Selfie!? Pictures of La Goulue, ca. 1885

La Belle Époque, the “Beautiful Era” was a prosperous, modern, tantalizing period of French history. It was a period marked by technological, scientific, industrial advancement, as well as influential progression in the arts.

During the Belle Époque, a new, vivacious world was brought to life… a world full of immensely cultural, golden glory. Joy and creativity were given the opportunity to thrive in a colorful, artistic atmosphere. Modern acts and thoughts were given the opportunity to dance and flirt among the throngs of entertainment. There was noise and there was laughter. There was optimism and there was brilliancy. There was art and there was dance. There was burlesque and there were courtesans.

There was the Moulin Rouge, and there was the wild, fearless can-can dancer, La Goulue.

Peggy Guggenheim Photographed by Rogi André in Paris, ca. 1930

Marguerite “Peggy” Guggenheim (1898–1979) was an American art collector, bohemian and socialite. Born to the wealthy New York City Guggenheim family, she was the daughter of Benjamin Guggenheim, who went down with the Titanic in 1912, and the niece of Solomon R. Guggenheim, who established the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation.

Guggenheim collected art in Europe and America primarily between 1938 and 1946. She exhibited this collection as she built it; in 1949, she settled in Venice, where she lived and exhibited her collection for the rest of her life. The Peggy Guggenheim Collection is a modern art museum on the Grand Canal in Venice, Italy, and is one of the most visited attractions in Venice.

Extraordinary Vintage Portraits of American Women at the Turn of the 20th Century

This collection of photographs, shot by photographer James Arthur at the studio of Arthur & Philbric in Detroit, Michigan.

James Arthur was born on May 27, 1855 in Montreal. His parents were both immigrants from Scotland who were financially well off. Arthur attended prestigious private schools where it is implied that he developed the artistic eye that would influence his photographic work that followed. Following his father’s death, Arthur began working as a photographer with the well known J. and J. W. Notman studio.

He came to Detroit in 1881 and went to work with photographer J. E. Watson. In 1883 he became senior partner in the firm of Arthur & Philbric and they remained in business together for eight years. He then became sole proprietor of a firm called Arthur Studios.

Research also yielded information about Philbric. Most notable is that Philbric was a woman. Her name was Helen M. Philbric and her name appears in Michigan business directories as Arthur’s partner between 1884 and 1893.

On January 12, 1912, James Arthur died a successful and prominent photographer in his Detroit home. Ten years after his death, in a book detailing the early history of Detroit, Arthur was described as one the foremost photographers in the United States.

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PJ Harvey, Björk and Tori Amos Posing for Q Magazine in 1994

In 1993 and 1994, Polly Harvey, Björk and Tori Amos have rogered the charts with their special brew of spooky left-field weirdness and oestrogen-marinaded musings. Q Magazine invited the gleesome threesome over for a Tupperware Party With Attitude.

The elfin Eskimo, the kooky American chick and the mad bitch woman from hell were drinking tea and talking about other people’s perceptions of them and how wrong they always seem to be.

Gathered around a low table in a photographic studio in Islington, North London, they made for gently intense yet engaging company. Soon, the conversation was taking the unlikely B-roads hinted at in their expressly non-linear music. It is punctuated at regular intervals by staccato bursts of manic laughter.

Q Magazine’s cover, May 1994. (Photo by John Stoddart)

With five LPs between them (two unsettling albums apiece for Polly and Tori and one half-million UK seller for Björk’s startling Debut), they have given spooky, left-field major label weirdness back its good name and everyone from Kate Bush to Evan Dando a run for their money.

But what sets these women apart from the mainstream soft soul of Mariah Carey and Dina Carroll is their extraordinary singing voices. Björk’s is a heavenly hiccuping thing that almost defies terrestrial description; Polly’s is as if an opera diva had eaten a drum kit—swooping and percussive—and Tori’s is a finely tutored instrument that manages to simultaneously preach, purr and plead.

Their speaking voices are no less unusual: Björk boasts a yodeling Cockney-Icelandic hybrid with occasional East European overtones; Polly has the soft Rs and sleepily stretched vowels of her native Dorset; while Tori possesses a dreamy mid-American accent which, of the trio, bears the closest resemblance to that which you hear on her records.

Famous Photograph of Mandy Rice-Davies and Christine Keeler Taking a Lunch Break in a London Pub, 1963

Doreen Spooner was the first female staff photographer on a British national newspaper. In a career stretching from the late 1940s to the 1990s, mostly at the Daily Mirror, she became, unintentionally, something of a feminist icon.

Her big break came in 1963 when, during the Profumo affair, she scooped a picture of Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies in a London pub, shot from inside the ladies’ loo in murky conditions. Doreen fled before the irate landlord could grab her camera. The photograph made the front pages in the UK and the US – and also made her name.

Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice Davies in Henekey’s Long Bar in Holborn (now called the Cittie of Yorke).

The picture on the front page of Daily Mirror.

Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies taking a break from the trial of society osteopath Stephen Ward at the Old Bailey on July 22, 1963. (Photo by Doreen Spooner/Mirrorpix via Getty Images)

Gorgeous Portraits of Maggie Smith as Aunt Augusta in ‘Travels With My Aunt’ (1972)

Maggie Smith is grand in the multi-level role of Aunt Augusta –– posturing, leaning and croaking as the ancient lady, breathless and wide eyed as the girl suddenly introduced to romance.

Although the role of the dotty Aunt Augusta was originally set for Katharine Hepburn, a long-time collaborator of director George Cukor, it would be 36-year old Maggie Smith who appeared in front of the camera in this sprightly adaptation of Graham Greene's novel.

Her larger than life character makes mincemeat of her nervous nephew Henry (Alec McCowen, aged 45) as they head on a trip together which pulls him into the weird worlds of smuggling, kidnapping, and bribery. Joining them is Augusta's current beau, the drug-addled Wordsworth (Louis Gossett Jr).

Their travels are hugely diverting and rather bizarre, and Smith, McCowen, and Gossett are an excellent team, especially as Augusta leads her nephew to the dark side. Robert Stephens, then married to Smith, makes a great snake in the grass.

Travels With My Aunt (1972) is based on a novel by Graham Greene and directed by Hollywood legend George Cukor. Nominated for 4 Oscars including for Best Actress (Maggie Smith) and winning for Best Costume Design, Travels With My Aunt (1972) is a pretty kooky film, but its not entirely satisfying. Novel author Graham Greene said that he hated the movie, though he admitted that he walked out after five minutes.

Rare and Amazing Color Photographs of Preparations on the American Homefront

Color photography was first pioneered in the mid-19th century, but the processes for capturing and reproducing color images were time consuming and difficult. The advent of the Autochrome process, developed by French brothers Auguste and Louis Lumière in the early 20th century, made color photography more widely accessible, even to amateur photographers.

That said, when the First World War began in 1914, by comparison to black and white image capture, color photography was still relatively rare. As such, most documentation of the Great War that we see today is in black and white.

There were, however, a handful of photographers working in color. One of those was American Charles C. Zoller, a Rochester, New York-based furniture dealer. In the days leading up to the U.S. entry into the Great War in 1917, and in the remaining days of that war, Zoller captured many images of preparations on the American homefront. Here are some:

Red Cross nurses, 1917.

Two nurses and child dressed as “Uncle Sam” in a World War I Support Parade in Pasadena, California, 1917.

Children in costumes with flags at Jones Square Park in Rochester, New York, 1918.

World War I Support Parade, 1917.

World War I Support Parade in Los Angeles, 1917.

Nurses, 1917.

World War I Support Parade in Los Angeles.

(Photos by Charles C. Zoller, courtesy of the George Eastman Museum, via PBS)