Bob Dylan's Early Days in New York: 17 Intimate Photos of 20-Year-Old Folk Singer Inside His First Apartment

In November 1961, Bob Dylan was just 20 years old, a young folk Singer on the cusp of fame. His first paid performances, at Gerde’s Folk City in New York’s Greenwich Village, were starting to attract interest.

His first review had just come out, a surprising rave in the New York Times, which said, “Mr. Dylan is both a comedian and a tragedian.”

Meanwhile, Ted Russell was a photojournalist working regularly for LIFE magazine in New York when an RCA Records publicist hired him to photograph the label’s latest discovery, Ann-Margret.

Shortly afterward, the publicist moved to Columbia Records and invited Russell to take some pictures of its new hire, Bob Dylan. Russell liked the idea, thinking a story on an up-and-coming Village folk singer could interest LIFE.

“I wanted to do an essay on the trials and tribulations of an up-and-coming folk singer trying to make it in the big city,” Russell told the NY Times. "[The LIFE editors] gave me a big yawn, not the slightest interest." Despite the lack of interest in that shoot, Russell ended up shooting Dylan twice more in 1963 and 1964, when he was already a star.

Dylan and Suze Rotolo

Dylan inside the kitchen of his W. 4th Street apartment

Dylan inside his first apartment in NYC on W. 4th Street

Dylan talking to James Baldwin at the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee's Bill of Rights Dinner

Dylan singing at Gerde's Folk City in Greenwich Village

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London's Hidden Tunnels: These Amazing Vintage Cutaway Diagrams Show Extraordinary Views of Piccadilly Circus' Underground Station

Unlike other major subway systems such as New York or Paris, the London Underground is largely tunneled rather than laid in a covered trench. Station interchanges require complex underground networks of tunnels such as these cutaway diagrams at Piccadilly Circus.

Piccadilly Circus tube station by Renzo Picasso, 1929. Pedants may note that the traffic flow has been reversed, as it would be in Italy. © Archivio Renzo Picasso, Genoa.

1930, D MacPherson's cluttered cutaway of Piccadilly Circus underground station to explain the complexity of works to the excited public. © London Transport Museum Collection

1989, London Transport Museum commissioned Gavin Dunn to draw this updated modern 3D cutaway of Piccadilly Circus station. © London Transport Museum Collection.

Cutaway of London's Charing Cross railway, underground and trams. Popular Science Magazine 1921.

Bond Street Station, 1970s. Showing reconstruction for the Jubilee Line. It also references the Fleet Line as the Jubilee was known during the planning phase. © London Transport Museum Collection.

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46 Interesting Photos of Women with Their Bicycles From the 19th Century

By the 1890s, the bicycle was creating a social revolution in the United States. Nearly two million bicycles were being manufactured each year and were being sold throughout the country. People who previously had to walk now had a new means of transportation and this meant that millions of people were being given a new means of mobility.

Back to the history of the bicycle. Vehicles for human transport that have two wheels and require balancing by the rider date back to the early 19th century, and began to develop in the second half of the 19th century. The term bicycle was coined in France in the 1860s.

Here is an interesting photo collection of women with their bicycles from the 19th century.

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A Curious Photo Collection of Girls Playing Cards in 1941

Girls playing cards (apparently strip poker) and drinking Coca-Cola. Photo from the Office of War Information archive, taken by Arthur Siegel in the summer of 1941 in Detroit.

A game of cards, 1941

String of pearls, 1941

The upper hand, 1941

Your turn, 1941

 Loser, 1941

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Take a Look at Pablo Picasso's Self-Portraits From Age 15 to Age 90

Known as one of the most prolific painters of Modern Art, Pablo Picasso was undoubtedly a man of many talents. The Spanish artist experimented with and excelled in many mediums, from painting and drawing to sculpting and collaging. In addition to different art forms and unique materials, however, Picasso also worked in a spectacular array of styles. This constantly changing aesthetic approach is evident in his series of self-portraits, which he painted from the age of 15 until 90.

15 Years Old (1896)

18 Years Old (1900)

20 Years Old (1901)

24 Years Old (1906)

25 Years Old (1907)

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Henryk Ross’s Grim Holocaust Photographs Document Daily Life in the Lodz Ghetto

From 1940 to 1944, photographer Henryk Ross (1910-1991) documented life inside the Lodz Ghetto in Poland. Officially, Ross worked for the ghetto’s Jewish Administration’s Statistics department, photographing the Jewish ghetto’s inhabitants for identification cards and for propaganda images to be used by the Nazis. When Ross was not working in his bureaucratic capacity however, he risked his life to photograph the reality of daily life in the ghetto. Sometimes he shot through holes in walls or cracks in doors. On occasion, he flicked open his overcoat, took a photo, then quickly covered up his camera. If he’d been discovered, he would have been shot.

"There was an order: 'All the Jews to the ghetto!'" Henryk Ross would later recall. "The Jews in the town were robbed. They carried the remains of their possessions into the [Lodz] ghetto."

When news of the final order for the liquidation reached the ghetto in August, 1944, he packed the negatives into iron canisters, locked them into a tar-lined, wooden box and buried them under the remains of a house, where they lay, mouldering, for seven months.

Henryk Ross’s Litzmannstadt Ghetto identification card, December 25, 1941.

"I buried my negatives in the ground in order that there should be some record of our tragedy... I was anticipating the total destruction of Polish Jewry. I wanted to leave a historical record of our martyrdom." - Henryk Ross said.

As one of the mere 877 recorded survivors of the ghetto, Ross returned for the negatives after Lodz’s liberation, discovering that more than half of the original 6,000 remained intact. His photographs, acquired by the Art Gallery of Ontario in 2007.

A group of women with sacks and pails, walking past synagogue ruins heading for deportation.

A smiling child.

A man who saved the Torah from the rubble of the synagogue on Wolborska Street.

Deportation in winter.

Residents sorting belongings left behind after deportation.

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Pictures of the Book Rescuers in 1951

A small collection of photos from the LIFE Archives, taken by Thomas Mcavoy, show the sheer awesomeness of librarians. Pictured in 1951 drying out state library books damaged by fighting the Lewis Cass State Office Building fire in Lansing, Michigan; it was quite the undertaking.

The fire was started by a 19 year-old Naval Reservist who feared being sent to war in Korea and thought that “a little fire” would gain him the probationary status he coveted. The 1951 disaster destroyed much State property, including some government records. The fire proved an object lesson on the importance of record keeping. Many documents were unrecoverable and proper inventories didn’t exist.

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