The Chief’s Daughter of the Laguna Pueblo: Extraordinary Vintage Portraits of Loti-kee-yah-tede From the 1900s

Loti-kee-yah-tede, was the chief’s daughter of the Laguna Pueblo, when she was photographed wearing Ka-waik clothing with a belt and beaded necklaces by Carl Moon in about 1905. The Laguna Pueblo is located in the semi-arid lands west-central New Mexico, near Albuquerque.

Carl E. Moon was born in Wilmington, Ohio in 1878. After graduation from high school, he served two years with the Ohio National Guard before apprenticing with various photographers in Ohio, West Virginia and Texas. He moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1903, where he set up a photography studio and began making “art studies” of the Native Americans of the Southwest, both in photographs and in oil paintings, sometimes living for weeks at a time in Navajo villages.

From 1905-1906, Moon had a short-lived partnership in Albuquerque with businessman Thomas F. Keleher, called the Moon-Keleher Studio. After the partnership dissolved, Moon continued working, photographing carefully selected Indian “subjects” in a romantic, posed style. His photographs began appearing in magazines and he exhibited at the Museum of Natural History in New York. President Theodore Roosevelt invited Moon to exhibit his Native American photographs at the White House.

In 1907, Moon signed a contract with the Fred Harvey Company to produce photographs for what would be the Fred Harvey Collection of Southwest Indian Pictures. Beginning in 1911, he operated out of El Tovar Studio in the Grand Canyon. While employed by the Fred Harvey Co., he also worked as a photographer for the Santa Fe Railroad. For seven years, from 1907 to 1914, Moon photographed the native people of the Southwest, in his studio and in their villages. His images appeared (often uncredited) in brochures and publications for both companies.

Moon resigned from Fred Harvey Co. in 1914, and he and his second wife, Grace Purdie Moon, moved to Pasadena, California, where he continued to work as a photographer and painter. In 1923, Henry E. Huntington purchased from Moon 293 large, mounted photographic prints and 12 oil paintings (12 more paintings were purchased in 1925). This remains the largest and most complete collection of Carl Moon's work extant.

In 1924, Moon began work on “Indians of the Southwest,” a set of 100 of his finest prints. Published in 1936, only ten copies were ever produced. With his wife Grace, he also wrote and illustrated many children’s books about the Indians of the Southwest. Moon died in 1948, in San Francisco, at the home of his daughter.

Female Photographers on Bicycles, circa 1890s

These young American women can be seen as they started off on a bicycle tour, and they are holding their box cameras so they can click some pics along the way.

Kodak introduced the first commercially successful box camera with roll film in May 1888. Their advertising slogan was “You press the button – we do the rest.” It was an easy to use camera, suitable for everyone, and users could take a whole series of photos without having to reload the camera.

Today is the start of a long holiday weekend, and we expect that many Americans will be going on similar bicycle journeys, over 120 years later, using smartphones instead of box cameras to capture memories.

Stunning Portrait Photography by Clarence Hudson White

Clarence Hudson White (1871–1925) was an American photographer, teacher and a founding member of the Photo-Secession movement. He grew up in small towns in Ohio, where his primary influences were his family and the social life of rural America. After visiting the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, he took up photography.

Portrait photography by Clarence Hudson White

Although he was completely self-taught in the medium, within a few years he was internationally known for his pictorial photographs that captured the spirit and sentimentality of America in the early twentieth century. As he became well known for his images, White was sought out by other photographers who often traveled to Ohio to learn from him. He became friends with Alfred Stieglitz and helped advance the cause of photography as a true art form.

In 1906, White and his family moved to New York City in order to be closer to Stieglitz and his circle and to further promote his own work. While there he became interested in teaching photography and in 1914 he established the Clarence H. White School of Photography, the first educational institution in America to teach photography as art.

Due to the demands of his teaching duties, his own photography declined and White produced little new work during the last decade of his life. In 1925 he suffered a heart attack and died while teaching students in Mexico City.

These beautiful photos are part of his work that Clarence Hudson White took portraits of American ladies in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The shelter, 1897

Woman seated on a porch railing, 1897

Blind man's bluff, Newark, Ohio, 1898

Girl with harp (Letitia Felix), Newark, Ohio, 1898

Girl with sword, circa 1898

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30 Portraits of Lovely Ladies Featured on the Covers of Radio Control Modeler Magazines From the 1970s and 1980s

We all know about the lovely ladies who graced the covers of such manly car and bike magazines as Easy Rider, Hot Rod, and Lowrider... but there was another type of magazine that gave those macho muscle car magazines a run for their money, the radio control airplane magazine.

A radio-controlled aircraft (often called RC aircraft or RC plane) is a small flying machine that is controlled remotely by an operator on the ground using a hand-held radio transmitter. The transmitter communicates with a receiver within the craft that sends signals to servomechanisms (servos) which move the control surfaces based on the position of joysticks on the transmitter. The control surfaces, in turn, affect the orientation of the plane.

The first official contest for RC model airplanes was technically held in 1936, but no contestants flew radio-controlled models that year. The first official RC contest with entrants was in 1937. And it was not until the 1970s that this form of aeromodeling became so massively popular.

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Photos of Old English Costumes Dating From ca. 1450 Through the 1870s

Talbot Hughes (1869–1942) was a British painter (of genre, history and landscape), a collector of historical costumes and miniature portraits, and writer on fine art and costume design. He amassed a collection of over 750 historical costumes and accessories, dating from ca. 1450 through the 1870s, which he used as studio props.

In 1910 he sold a small collection of bags to the Victoria and Albert Museum and also donated individual items, including an 1820s frock coat. In 1913, when Hughes decided to put the rest of his collection up for sale, he was offered £5,000 by an American department store who wished to donate it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Rather than send his collection abroad, Hughes instead sold it to the department store Harrods in London for £2,500, where it was displayed for three weeks to advertise the store’s own range of women’s contemporary fashions.

After this period, Harrods transferred the collection by donation to the Victoria & Albert Museum, the result of negotiations by the then Director of the V&A, Cecil Harcourt Smith. The collection is still kept at the V&A. Talbot Hughes continued to donate individual items to the Museum up until 1931.

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42 Portraits of Rural Americans From the Mid-19th Century

The United States began as a largely rural nation, with most people living on farms or in small towns and villages. While the rural population continued to grow in the late 1800s, the urban population was growing much more rapidly. Still, a majority of Americans lived in rural areas in 1900.

Rural Americans in the 1840s and 1850s

New machines for use in farming were invented in this period, but horses, oxen, and people still provided most of the power that operated the machinery. While farmers now produced cash crops (crops grown for sale), they were still remarkably self-sufficient, often making or trading for nearly everything required by their own families.

Here below is a set of amazing photos from Mitch Young that shows portraits of rural Americans in the 1840s and 1850s.

A little girl with crossed eyes

A woman posed by a vase of flowers

A baby girl

A country boy wearing a great hat

A darling little girl in a tinted off shoulder dress and red coral necklace

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Stunning Portraits of Eartha Kitt Taken by Philippe Halsman in 1954

With a voice like a sultry purr, entertainer Eartha Kitt (January 17, 1927 – December 25, 2008) claimed countless fans, including Orson Welles, who called her “the most exciting woman in the world.”

Kitt debuted as a featured dancer and vocalist with Katherine Dunham’s dance troupe in 1945, before embarking on an international career as a cabaret singer and actor. Her singing style and provocative stage persona made her a top nightclub attraction, and her early 1950s recordings of “C’est si bon” and “Santa Baby” remain popular standards.

Kitt’s career has included performances on Broadway, in films, and on television, where she scored a hit as the villainous Catwoman on Batman (1967). She is also remembered for voicing her opposition to the Vietnam War during a 1968 White House luncheon hosted by Lady Bird Johnson—an action that caused Kitt to be blacklisted professionally for some time.

These amazing photographs were taken by Philippe Halsman in 1954. He was at one point considered the best photo-portraitist in France. Halsman had an incessant interest in faces: “Every face I see seems to hide—and sometimes fleetingly reveal—the mystery of another human being.”

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26 Vintage Photos of Julie Andrews in Her Feature Film Debut as Mary Poppins in 1964

Mary Poppins is a 1964 American musical fantasy film directed by Robert Stevenson and produced by Walt Disney, with songs written and composed by the Sherman Brothers. The screenplay is by Bill Walsh and Don DaGradi, based on P. L. Travers’ book series Mary Poppins. The film, which combines live-action and animation, stars Julie Andrews in her feature film debut as Mary Poppins, who visits a dysfunctional family in London and employs her unique brand of lifestyle to improve the family’s dynamic.

Mary Poppins was released on August 27, 1964, to critical acclaim and commercial success. It became the highest-grossing film of 1964 and, at the time of its release, was Disney’s highest-grossing film ever. It received a total of 13 Academy Awards nominations, including Best Picture – a record for any film released by Walt Disney Studios – and won five. Mary Poppins is considered Walt Disney’s crowning live-action achievement, and is the only one of his films which earned a Best Picture nomination during his lifetime.

In 1963, Walt Disney had seen Julie Andrews’ performance in Camelot and subsequently offered her the role; Andrews initially declined because of pregnancy, returning to London to give birth, but Disney firmly insisted, saying, “We’ll wait for you.” After the birth of her daughter, P. L. Travers, author of the Mary Poppins book series, later called Andrews, telling her: “Well, you’re much too pretty of course. But you’ve got the nose for it.”

Disney rented a house in Toluca Lake, Los Angeles for her family to reside in during production. Andrews relied largely on instinct for her portrayal, conceptualizing her background and giving the character a “particular walk” and a turned-out stance to suit her ladylike sensibility. Andrews referred to production as “unrelenting” given the physical exertion and technical details, saying that she “could not have asked” for a better introduction to film.

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Stunning Vintage Portraits of Girls in Front of Mirrors Taken by Lady Clementina Hawarden

Clementina Maude, Viscountess Hawarden, née Clementina Elphinstone Fleeming (1822–1865) commonly known as Lady Clementina Hawarden, was a noted English amateur portrait photographer of the Victorian Era.

As a devoted mother, her life revolved around her eight children. She took up photography in 1857; using her daughters as models, she created a body of work remarkable for its technical brilliance and its original depiction of nascent womanhood.

Lady Hawarden showed her work in the 1863 and 1864 exhibitions of the Photographic Society. With the exception of a few rare examples, her photographs remained in the possession of her family until 1939, when the more than eight hundred images were donated to the Victoria and Albert Museum. Only recently have they been the objects of research, publication, and exhibition.

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Ronnie Spector Photographed by Anthony Barboza, 1978

Ronnie Spector, the cat-eyed, bee-hived rock and roll siren who sang such 1960s hits as “Be My Baby,” “Baby I Love You” and “Walking in the Rain” as the leader of the girl group The Ronettes, has died. She was 78.

Spector died Wednesday after a brief battle with cancer, her family said. “Ronnie lived her life with a twinkle in her eye, a spunky attitude, a wicked sense of humor and a smile on her face. She was filled with love and gratitude,” a statement said. No other details were revealed.

Only a few artists in history have been capable of defining an entire era in pop music. Ronnie Spector is one of those artists: the embodiment of the heart, soul, and passion of female rock and roll in the 1960s. And to this day, no one has ever surpassed Ronnie's powerful trademark vocals, her gutsy attitude, or her innocent but knowing sexuality. For these qualities and more, Ronnie Spector and the Ronettes, were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in March 2007.

Ronnie Spector was born and raised in Spanish Harlem. She formed the Ronettes while in her teens and released her first records in 1961 on the Colpix label.

The Ronettes were also professional singers and dancers at New York’s Peppermint Lounge. There they were discovered by legendary disc jockey “Murray the K" (Murray Kaufman), who promptly hired them as dancers for his Brooklyn Fox Theater rock and roll revues.

Beginning in 1963, Ronnie Spector—as lead singer of the ultimate girl group, The Ronettes—recorded a long string of classic pop hits: powerful, poignant teen anthems like the Grammy Award-winning “Walking in the Rain,” “Do I Love You,” “Baby I Love You,” “The Best Part of Breaking Up,” “I Can Hear Music,” and the international Number One smash “Be My Baby.” These records are among the best-loved and most-emulated recordings in the history of rock and roll.

As the Number One pop group in England, Ronnie Spector and the Ronettes headlined over acts like the Rolling Stones and Eric Clapton and The Yardbirds. The Beatles personally requested that the Ronettes join their final U.S. tour in August 1966; later that year, at Basin Street East, a talented young come­dian named Richard Pryor was the opening act for the Ronettes' final live performance.

In 1970, Ronnie sang on Jimi Hendrix’s recording of“Earth Blues”. In 1971, Ronnie Spector released her Apple Records debut single, “Try Some, Buy Some”—written and produced by George Harrison, with a backing band that included George, John Lennon, and Ringo Starr.

In 1976, Billy Joel wrote “Say Goodbye to Hollywood” as a tribute to Ronnie. The next year, she recorded the song with backing by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, and it was issued as a single on Epic Records.