Shorpy Trip

Came across a really cool website featuring photographs from the first half of the 20th Century, from journalistic slices of life to oddball visual novelties to wonderful period moments, such as the above shot, "Atlantic City Forever: 1912."

Called "Shorpy: The 100-Year-Old Photo Blog," the curious site is named after Shorpy Higgenbotham, a young Alabama coal minor who was immortalized in a series of 1910 photographs  by the legendary Lewis Wickes Hine. (Such an obvious name for a blog, after all.) The site's commercial functions include links to fine-art print sales and a print gallery, but it also makes for fascinating browsing, with seemingly endless pages of photos offering glimpses back in time. Though most images are early-century black-and-whites, a few Ektachrome and Polaroid color shots from the '50s and '60s appear.

Most of the jpegs are extracted from reference images from the Library of Congress archive, according to the site, which also has brief captions, amusing commentary threads, and a searchable database. It's a marvelous blend of musty old pictures and new technology. Worth a glance — or many.
— Jack Crager