Fascinating Black and White Photographs Capture Street Scenes of New York City in the 1950s by Vivian Maier

Vivian Maier (1926 – 2009) was an American amateur street photographer who was born in New York but grew up in France, and after returning to the U.S., worked for about forty years as a nanny in Chicago. During those years she took about 100,000 photographs, primarily of people and cityscapes most often in Chicago, although she traveled and photographed worldwide.

Her photographs remained unknown and mostly undeveloped until they were discovered by a local historian, John Maloof, in 2007. Following Maier's death her work began to receive critical acclaim. Her photographs have appeared in newspapers in Italy, Argentina, and England, and have been exhibited alongside other artists' work in Denmark and Norway.

Collected here are Maier's photos that were all taken in New York during the 1950s. They'll transport you back into another time and place while still making you feel connected to the subjects as a whole.

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Beautiful Photographs Capture Street Scenes of London in the 1960s

Some of these photos show the street in it's glory days in the late Sixties, including the polka dotted Mens boutique Lord John. Other places snapped around London include Portobello Road, Piccadilly Circus and some early hippies hanging out in Trafalgar Square.

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A Series of Never-Before Seen Pictures of Marilyn Monroe Are Published in New Book

A series of never-before seen pictures of Marilyn Monroe showing the sex symbol in unguarded and intimate moments has been published for the first time. The photos show the screen legend, then 27, still oozing sex appeal despite being in the clutches of a grizzly bear. They are part of more than 100 previously unpublished and digitally restored black and white images taken during the summer of 1953 and featured in a new book.

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Beautiful Black and White Portrait Pictures of Ann Dvorak

Ann Dvorak (1911–1979) was an American film actress. Asked how to pronounce her adopted surname, she told The Literary Digest: ”My name is properly pronounced vor'shack. The D remains silent. I have had quite a time with the name, having been called practically everything from Balzac to Bickelsrock.”

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60 Extraordinary Portrait Photos of Lovely Anonymous Ziegfeld Follies Showgirls From Between the 1910s and 1940s

Alfred Cheney Johnston (1885–1971) was a New York City-based photographer known for his portraits of Ziegfeld Follies showgirls as well as of actors and actresses from the worlds of stage and film.

In approximately 1917, Johnston was hired by famed New York City live-theater showman and producer Florenz Ziegfeld as a contracted photographer, and was affiliated with the Ziegfeld Follies for the next fifteen years or so.

He also maintained his own highly successful personal commercial photo studio at various locations around New York City as well, photographing everything from aspiring actresses and society matrons to a wide range of upscale retail commercial products—mostly men's and women's fashions—for magazine ads.

He photographed several hundred actresses and showgirls (mainly in New York City, and whether they were part of the Follies or not) during that time period. Alfred Cheney Johnston died in a car crash near his home in Connecticut on April 17, 1971, three years after the death of his longtime wife, Doris. They had no children.

Featuring here the photographs of lovely, anonymous Ziegfeld girls taken by Alfred Johnston from between the 1910s and 1940s.

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Haunting Portraits of Prostitutes From New Orleans' Storeyville in the Early 1910s

Before Storyville of New Orleans shut down in 1917, it was the only legalized red-light district in North America, and French photographer E. J. Bellocq took portraits inside of these storied brothels. The Storyville photographs not only serve as a record of the prostitutes, but also the interiors of the businesses that housed them.

All the photographs are portraits of women. Many of the negatives were badly damaged, in part deliberately, which encouraged speculation. Many of the faces had been scraped out; whether this was done by Bellocq, his Jesuit priest brother who inherited them after E. J.'s death or someone else is unknown. Bellocq is the most likely candidate, since the damage was done while the emulsion was still wet.

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Celebrities in the Air: 33 Fabulous Portraits of Famous People Jumping Taken in the 1950s and ’60s by Philippe Halsman

Philippe Halsman, who had 101 LIFE covers to his credit when he died in 1979, felt a portrait that did not show psychological insight was “an empty likeness” of its subject.

Rolleiflex in hand and tongue in cheek, he invented his own Rorschach test – “jumpology” – and talked his subjects into becoming airborne in the interest of science.

Richard Nixon, Aldous Huxley, Marilyn Monroe, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor are among the celebrities he launches into orbit.

Marilyn Monroe and Philippe Halsman, 1954

The Cat Girl, Lilly Christine, 1953

Duke & Dutchess of Windsor, 1956

Grace Kelly, 1959

Richard Nixon, 1955

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