That's what teenage girls looked like in the 1940s.
November 27, 2017
Striking Black and White Photographs of New York City’s ‘Mean Streets’ in the 1970s and 1980s
Renowned photographer Edward Grazda began his career in that version of NYC. The black and white photos in Mean Streets offer a look at that desolate era captured with the deliberate and elegant eye that propelled Grazda to further success. It's a version of New York that has been all but scrubbed clean in the financially solvent years that have followed, but the character of the city has been indelibly marked by the scars of those years.
In the late 1970s and early 80s, the institutions of power in New York had failed. A bankrupt city government had sold its power over to the banks, and the financiers' severe austerity programs gutted the city's support systems.
Most of the city's traditional industries had already left, and those power brokers in charge of the new system retreated to their high rises and left the streets to the hustlers, preachers, and bums; the workers struggling to get by; and a new generation of artists who were squatting in the empty industrial buildings downtown and bearing witness to the urban decay and institutional abandonment all around them.
For the tough and determined, the quick and the gifted, the prescient and the prolific, a cheap living could be scratched out in the mean streets.
In the late 1970s and early 80s, the institutions of power in New York had failed. A bankrupt city government had sold its power over to the banks, and the financiers' severe austerity programs gutted the city's support systems.
Most of the city's traditional industries had already left, and those power brokers in charge of the new system retreated to their high rises and left the streets to the hustlers, preachers, and bums; the workers struggling to get by; and a new generation of artists who were squatting in the empty industrial buildings downtown and bearing witness to the urban decay and institutional abandonment all around them.
For the tough and determined, the quick and the gifted, the prescient and the prolific, a cheap living could be scratched out in the mean streets.
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| Broadway & 55th Street, 1970 |
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| Houston Street, 1973 |
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| Elizabeth & Houston Streets, 1975 |
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| Bowery, 1973 |
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| Bowery & Bleecker Street, 1981 |
November 26, 2017
Amazing Infographic of the Evolution of Television
The life changing technology that had families huddling around a box in their living rooms, bonding over Saturday night programs. However, the way television has been viewed and engaged with has changed over the years.
The television counts among a handful of designs that most dramatically changed 20th-century society. As this illustrated poster by Reddit user CaptnChristiana visualizes, the design has evolved mightily since the boxy retro contraptions of yesteryear, like the Emyvisor and the Marconi. With flatscreens and high-definition displays that can seem crisper and more colorful than reality itself, 21st-century viewers are comparatively spoiled.
The modern television’s earliest ancestor was the Octagon, made by General Electric in 1928. It used a mechanical, rotating disc technology to display images on its three-inch screen. While it was never mass-produced, it played what is widely considered the world’s first television drama: “The Queen’s Messenger.”
Soon, this primitive technology evolved into commercially available home TV sets, accessible, at first, only as fancy toys for the wealthy. Designers knew how revolutionary television would be, and advertisers milked the technology’s novelty in ways that may now seem kitschy and dated: as the 1936 Cossor Television was advertised in a brochure: “Radio–its thrills, its interests, increased one hundred fold by Television... Radio is blind no longer. The most exciting running commentary is made immeasurably more thrilling when you can SEE too!” The Cossor came in a walnut cabinet of sorts, its screen hidden by doors when not in use–a design feature that was largely retired in later designs, as were round screens, seen in 1949’s Raytheon TV, and the built-in legs seen on sets in the ’50s and ’60s.
The number of television sets in use in the United States rose from 6,000 in 1946 to more than 12 million by 1951. The infographic is missing some key moments in TV design–it jumps from 1973 to 1998, leaving out ’80s console TVs and the rest of the sets from the decade of excess, but it offers a visualization of how over the decades, buttons replaced knobs and dials, profiles got slimmer, and sleek black replaced colorful frames. TVs, in the natural progression of things, became smart. In 2011, 96.7% of American households own television sets. From its roots as an experimental, octagon-shaped viewing device less than a century ago, the TV has become a piece of furniture as commonplace as the dinner table and far more worshipped, with American viewers averaging five hours of daily devotion to their screens.
(Image by CaptnChristiana; this original article was published on Co.Design)
The television counts among a handful of designs that most dramatically changed 20th-century society. As this illustrated poster by Reddit user CaptnChristiana visualizes, the design has evolved mightily since the boxy retro contraptions of yesteryear, like the Emyvisor and the Marconi. With flatscreens and high-definition displays that can seem crisper and more colorful than reality itself, 21st-century viewers are comparatively spoiled.
The modern television’s earliest ancestor was the Octagon, made by General Electric in 1928. It used a mechanical, rotating disc technology to display images on its three-inch screen. While it was never mass-produced, it played what is widely considered the world’s first television drama: “The Queen’s Messenger.”
Soon, this primitive technology evolved into commercially available home TV sets, accessible, at first, only as fancy toys for the wealthy. Designers knew how revolutionary television would be, and advertisers milked the technology’s novelty in ways that may now seem kitschy and dated: as the 1936 Cossor Television was advertised in a brochure: “Radio–its thrills, its interests, increased one hundred fold by Television... Radio is blind no longer. The most exciting running commentary is made immeasurably more thrilling when you can SEE too!” The Cossor came in a walnut cabinet of sorts, its screen hidden by doors when not in use–a design feature that was largely retired in later designs, as were round screens, seen in 1949’s Raytheon TV, and the built-in legs seen on sets in the ’50s and ’60s.
The number of television sets in use in the United States rose from 6,000 in 1946 to more than 12 million by 1951. The infographic is missing some key moments in TV design–it jumps from 1973 to 1998, leaving out ’80s console TVs and the rest of the sets from the decade of excess, but it offers a visualization of how over the decades, buttons replaced knobs and dials, profiles got slimmer, and sleek black replaced colorful frames. TVs, in the natural progression of things, became smart. In 2011, 96.7% of American households own television sets. From its roots as an experimental, octagon-shaped viewing device less than a century ago, the TV has become a piece of furniture as commonplace as the dinner table and far more worshipped, with American viewers averaging five hours of daily devotion to their screens.
(Image by CaptnChristiana; this original article was published on Co.Design)
Untypical Girls: Early Photographs of Women in Punk From Between the Late 1970s and Early 1990s
These rarely seen, personal photographs, taken from Sam Knee's forthcoming book, Untypical Girls: Styles and Sounds of the Transatlantic Indie Revolution, chart the rise of women in alternative music.
From the advent of punk in late-70s Britain to grunge via no wave, indie, and hardcore, Untypical Girls traces the evolution of indie girl styles, and, more important, the transformation and explosion of voices long suppressed in the music industry.
As Knee writes in the introduction, "This book is by no means an indie girl A-Z. Merely a glimpse into a journey from nascent radical stages to the full flower of revolution, the looks and attitudes of which are frighteningly relevant today."
From the advent of punk in late-70s Britain to grunge via no wave, indie, and hardcore, Untypical Girls traces the evolution of indie girl styles, and, more important, the transformation and explosion of voices long suppressed in the music industry.
As Knee writes in the introduction, "This book is by no means an indie girl A-Z. Merely a glimpse into a journey from nascent radical stages to the full flower of revolution, the looks and attitudes of which are frighteningly relevant today."
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| Punk girls with Belinda Carlisle from the Go-Go’s in the center. Los Angeles, 1978. Photo by Mike Murphy. |
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| Kim Gordon. Somewhere in Connecticut, 1987. Photo by Scott Munroe. |
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| Poly Styrene from the X-Ray Spex at the Red Cow. London, 1977. Photo by Jeremy Gibbs. |
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| Two riot girls at the March for Women's Lives. Washington, DC, 1992. Photo by Pat Graham. |
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| Gee Vaucher of CRASS at Eric's Club. Liverpool, England, 1979. Photo by Mark Nick Jordan. |
26 Incredible Colorized Photos That Show Daily Life of Laborers in the Early 20th Century
Lewis Wickes Hine (1874-1940) was an American sociologist and photographer who used his camera as a tool for social reform. His photographs were instrumental in changing child labor laws in the United States.
These incredible photographs he shot that were colorized by Rob van den Berg showing the daily life laborers in the United States from between the 1900s and 1920s.
These incredible photographs he shot that were colorized by Rob van den Berg showing the daily life laborers in the United States from between the 1900s and 1920s.
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| 10 yr. old girl tending stand at 4th and Garden Streets. On right is entrance to bar room of saloon. Stand is owned by Mr. Rakoff, whose daughters, 11 yrs and 13 yrs old, take turns, tending it. Fanny Rakoff, 11 years old, often tends stand till 7:30 p.m, Hoboken, New Jersey, December 1912 (by Lewis Wickes Hine) |
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| 3 girls working in Salvan Medicine Factory and in a seed store, Olive near 14th St., St. Louis, Missouri, May 12th, 1910 (by Lewis Wickes Hine) |
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| A heavy load for an old woman, Lafayette St., below Astor Place, New York (by Lewis Wickes Hine) |
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| A little girl laborer, New York, March 1924 (by Lewis Wickes Hine) |
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| Adolescents and other in Payne Cotton Mill, Macon, Georgia. Girl on end with dropping eyelids has been helping there one year, Jan. 20, 1909 (by Lewis Wickes Hine) |
Vivid Color Photos Capture the Cityscapes of New York and Chicago in the 1970s and '80s
Chicago-born photographer Wayne Sorce began capturing the people and places of urban landscapes while at the Art Institute of Chicago in the 1960s.
In the late ’70s and early ’80s he took large-scale color photos of his hometown and New York, capturing “a formal exactitude, the light, structures, and palette of these cities within a certain era,” according to a press release from the Joseph Bellows Gallery in L.A. where this “Urban Color” series is currently on view.
Not only do the vivid colors help express the spirit of the city at this time, but the way Sorce incorporates people exposes a unique energy in which they serve as “both inhabitants, as well as sculptural forms relating to a larger composed scene.” From Manhattan barbershops and restaurants to the gritty, industrial streets of Vinegar Hill, Brooklyn, the photos transport the viewer to a bygone NYC.
In the late ’70s and early ’80s he took large-scale color photos of his hometown and New York, capturing “a formal exactitude, the light, structures, and palette of these cities within a certain era,” according to a press release from the Joseph Bellows Gallery in L.A. where this “Urban Color” series is currently on view.
Not only do the vivid colors help express the spirit of the city at this time, but the way Sorce incorporates people exposes a unique energy in which they serve as “both inhabitants, as well as sculptural forms relating to a larger composed scene.” From Manhattan barbershops and restaurants to the gritty, industrial streets of Vinegar Hill, Brooklyn, the photos transport the viewer to a bygone NYC.
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| Varick Street, New York, 1984. |
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| Halsted Street, Chicago, 1978. |
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| Dave's Restaurant, New York, 1984. |
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| East Chicago, 1977. |
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| Fort Dearborn Coffee, Chicago, 1977. |
