fuckyeahhistorycrushes:

This is Rose Valland, one of the heroes of Nazi-Occupied France. An employee of the Louvre, she kept records of the art stolen by Nazi officers- what was taken, from where, and by who. She was instrumental in the postwar return of countless stolen pieces, and one of the most decorated women in French history.

Angkor Wat, Cambodia

firsttimeuser:

The western bell towers of St Paul’s Cathedral in London

photo by Cecil Beaton

crashcouture:

untitled by dearclaudia on Flickr.

La Lettre de la Photographie / Press Review

Paul Melcher’s selection

We live on the shores of history. Once in a while, elements of the past come back to us as waves, splashing about everywhere, only to retreat quietly and fuse into the sea of things already known.

Such a wave hit us last week. 
With the release of more than 300,000 historical images (800,000 digital content if you include videos, sounds, maps) from the Municipal Archives of the city of New York.


With a city like New York, where buildings are replaced faster than passing clouds and where neighborhoods change at the speed of immigrations, it is almost like discovering a foreign country. It seems that life was so much easier and pleasant, even if it might not be so true.

Nevertheless, we tend to navigate those images as if , somehow, they reminded us of a paradise lost, even if we didn’t live it. 
What happens then when we mix the present with the past ?

That is what Russian photo enthusiast Sergey Larenkov dared to investigate. His inspiration, the Russian State Documentary Film & Photo Archive, Krasnogorsk. He took images from the archive and merged them with photographs taken in the present. The result is stunning. Mixing, mostly photographs from the second word war with its contemporary location, he manages to brings to light how life goes on, even after the most dramatic event.

It seems, by looking at his images, that we are haunted by the past. While the contrast of events depicted is brutal, peace and war mingled, the result is eerily familiar because of the perfect blending of the environment.

We are reminded how quickly we forget, how we move on with such ease, and how, regardless of the damages we return to a state of inconsequential business. 
Both collection, one by its sheer volume and depth, the other, by its powerful message, remind us how we are locked with our past.

Links

http://www.nyc.gov/html/records/html/gallery/home.shtml
http://pmelcher.bo.lt/russiahistorical

theatlantic:

A Handwritten Artifact from the Aftermath of the Titanic’s Voyage

In the days after the Titanic sunk almost 100 years ago, a young mechanic named Cliff Crease was dispatched from Nova Scotia along with his crewmates on the CS Mackay Bennett to complete a grisly task. They had to retrieve the bodies floating in the Atlantic. Crease recorded the voyage in a slim little journal that was recently digitized by the Nova Scotia Archives. 

Crease was no poet and he did not attempt to elevate his language to match the task of describing the tragedy. He wrote plainly, recording the weather and the number of bodies they picked up and their need for more canvas in which to roll the bodies. His short entries are like woodcuts of the experience, describing the exact inverse of what must have been printed on his mind. He would forget the numbers and the weather, but he’d probably never forget the feeling of hoisting body after body from the sea for eleven and a half hours.

Fine weather started to 
pick up bodies at six 
a.m. and continued all 
day till five thirty 
P.M. Recovered fifty 
one bodies, forty 
six men four women 
and one baby. 
  Burried twenty four 
men at sea at eight 
fifteen P.M. Rev 
Canon Hinds in 
attendance also Ships 
Company. Bodies 
in good state but 
badly bruised by 
being knocked 
about in the water. 

Read more. [Image: Nova Scotia Archives]