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Black and White Photos of Berlin in Ruins in 1945
Striking Photos Documenting Life of African-Americans in Chicago’s South Side in 1941
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The Airstream Funeral Coach, ca 1980s
Did you know? During the 1980s Airstream produced around 32 funeral coaches. Designed to transport the deceased and family and flowers all at once – with space for a coffin, flowers and seating for 14 mourners.
In 1981, Airstream introduced a modified motorhome known as the Funeral Coach. It could transport 14 family members, a casket, and up to 20 baskets of flowers between the funeral home, church, and cemetery. Airstream was motivated to practicality to create this unique offering, and the story of the Funeral Coach’s genesis is as interesting as the product itself.
The story goes that in 1979, Airstream, Inc. had launched its Class A Motorhome line for the first time. However, because a recession and a gas crisis hit American drivers hard in the late 1970s, Airstream was suffering from a loss in sales. Looking for ways to offset this loss, Airstream’s president at the time, Gerry Letourneau, wanted to diversify into a wide range of customized vehicles based on motorhomes. Along with the Funeral Coach, this customized line included the Air Coach, which allowed business professionals to work together on the road, and the Sales Coach, which served as a mobile sales office or display room.
The Airstream Funeral Coach comfortably seated its passengers in either individual aircraft-style seats or on a wrap-around couch. It had a rear hatch compartment for flowers and a discreet side compartment for the casket. The Funeral Coach was presented as a fuel-efficient alternative that would reduce funeral procession traffic while maintaining dignity. Most importantly, however, it allowed families to travel together during a trying time.
In 1981, the cost of a Funeral Coach was $85,000 (about $250,000 today). A traditional hearse came in at $40,000, and two standard funeral limousines cost $60,000. Comparatively, the Funeral Coach was a cost-efficient option – and it was also backed by Airstream’s reputation for quality aluminum vehicles.
The standard floor plans were 27’ and 28’, but customized floor plans ranging from 24’ to 35’ were also available. Some funeral home owners chose to add features such as a radio, television, microwave, and lavatory to provide extra comfort for families on longer journeys. Funeral home nameplates and identifiers were added to the exterior of the Funeral Coach, but these were removable. Because it did not look like a hearse, the unit was versatile, and early brochures advertised that it could be loaned out for special functions.
Owner testimonies were positive and stated that families embraced the new approach as a comfortable, appropriate way to be together during a difficult time. Ultimately, however, only 32 units were produced from 1981-1991.
35 Vintage Photos of American Actor Dana Andrews in the 1940s and 1950s
Born 1909 near Collins in southern Mississippi, American actor Dana Andrews had his first role in Lucky Cisco Kid (1940), then in Sailor’s Lady (1940), released by Fox. He had his first lead in the B-movie Berlin Correspondent (1942), and second lead in Crash Dive (1943) and then appeared in the 1943 film adaptation of The Ox-Bow Incident in a role often cited as one of his best in which he played a lynching victim.
Andrews was a major Hollywood star during the 1940s. He is remembered for his roles as a police detective-lieutenant in the film noir Laura (1944) and as war veteran Fred Derry in The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), the latter being the role for which he received the most critical praise.
Andrews spent the 1970s in supporting roles of Hollywood films. He also appeared regularly on TV in such shows as Ironside, Get Christie Love!, Ellery Queen, The American Girls, The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries, and The Love Boat.
Andrews’s final roles included Born Again (1978), Ike: The War Years (1979), The Pilot (1980), Falcon Crest (1982–83) and Prince Jack (1985). He died of congestive heart failure and pneumonia in 1992, 15 days before his 84th birthday.
Take a look at these vintage photos to see portrait of Dana Andrews in the 1940s and 1950s.
30 Awful Album Covers Volume 8
Art is a strange creature. Ever mutating, evolving, and forever changing. Often the most obvious is overlooked. Often the over-looked is the most obvious in how we view the world around us. Often that which is overlooked is over shadowed by a more imposing medium. We identify so much with what we listen to and define parts of who we are by the sounds resting within the sleeves protecting the disc. We listen to the music and often take in the art with great interest but in many ways do not relate the image as art the way we do when we look at a painting or a photograph.
The art of album covers is a wild and wonderful genera of art that really has an upper hand in defining the culture that embraces the music it caresses. An honesty on a very temporal and primal level is recognized in the way this art is interpreted and rendered with these pieces.
These are gems that are the “less seen” visions and through them we can revisit the worlds that these artists and musicians lived in. Through them hopefully we can get a fresher glimpse of our own lives in the moment we live in.
Some of the images are disturbing and strange. Some are very revealing and serious commentary of the way we are as a community of humans. Others are humorous and delightful, poking fun at the world we live in. Mostly they are reflections of who we are and where we, where we have been, and where we are going to.
So enjoy these images. Have a laugh. Indulge.
30 Vintage Photos of Victorian Men Posing With Their Canes
A Victorian gentleman would have a number of canes – there would be a rustic cane, perhaps made of a stout wood such as ash, for walking the dogs and a more sober cane for the office. Then, for going to dinner and to the opera, a man would carry a lighter cane with a shaft made of an exotic wood, perhaps rosewood, with a gorgeous handle made out of something such as tortoise shell.
Whoever you were, there was a cane for you. If you were a Duke, there were canes that reflected your status in the richness of the wood. Peasants would carve their own canes and illustrate them with country pursuits, such as shooting, fishing and hunting. Sailors would use whalebone with whale teeth for the handles. Ebony and ivory, transported to Britain from the colonies, also ended up on canes. Some of these canes had additional functions.
Here below is a set of vintage photos that shows Victorian men posing with their canes.
Lancia Autoalveare, 1932 Triple-Decker Luxury Bus Which Ran From Rome to Tivoli
Built in 1932, the first real triple-decker bus, Lancia Autoalveare, was made in Italy. While not much is known about the manufacturer, it ran between Rome and Tivoli and carried 88 passengers.
The third level was essentially a smoking compartment and the bus had space for 440 pounds (200 kg) of luggage and space for dogs. It was 33.5 feet long and 11 feet wide and had a speed of 28 miles per hour (45 km per hour)
30 Stunning Color Photographs of Paris in 1923
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Jules Gervais-Courtellemont (1863–1931) was a French photographer who was famous for taking color autochromes during World War I. He was born near Fontainebleau in Avon, Seine-et-Marne, south of Paris. Courtellemont emigrated with his parents in 1874 to Algeria, and remained there for 20 years.
He became a globetrotter, always in search of something special and exotic. His photography drew him as far as the eastern Mediterranean, North Africa and on to Asia. He collected his works, the moment he had captured with his camera. A head full of dreams and two feet on the ground, is how a contemporary described the artist of light painting.
Courtellemont returned to his home province to record the war. His work reflects the photographic traditions of the autochrome. Landscapes are carefully composed, with due attention to lighting and placement within the picture frame. He used symbols such as the lonely cross and the charred tree for dramatic effect. Judging from the popularity of his lectures in Paris during the war, and the series of publications featuring the battles of Marne and Verdun, his autochromes had the ability to attract a great deal of public interest.
After the war, Courtellemont worked for an American publication. He eventually became a photographer for National Geographic. He was a lifelong friend of the novelist, Orientalist and photographer Pierre Loti. While over 5,500 Gervais-Courtellemont autochromes survive in various institutional collections, including the Musée Albert-Kahn in Boulogne-Billancourt and the Cinémathèque Robert-Lynen in central Paris, his work in private hands is quite rare and sought after.
Paris is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 34th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. Since the 17th century, Paris has been one of the world’s major centres of finance, diplomacy, commerce, fashion, gastronomy, science, and arts, and has sometimes been referred to as the capital of the world or “the City of Light”.The City of Paris is the centre of the region and province of Île-de-France, or Paris Region, with an estimated population of 12,262,544 in 2019, or about 19% of the population of France. The Paris Region had a GDP of €739 billion ($743 billion) in 2019, which is the highest in Europe. According to the Economist Intelligence Unit Worldwide Cost of Living Survey, in 2021, Paris was the city with the second-highest cost of living in the world, tied with Singapore, and after Tel Aviv.
Paris is a major railway, highway, and air-transport hub served by two international airports: Paris–Charles de Gaulle (the second-busiest airport in Europe) and Paris–Orly. Opened in 1900, the city’s subway system, the Paris Métro, serves 5.23 million passengers daily; it is the second-busiest metro system in Europe after the Moscow Metro. Gare du Nord is the 24th-busiest railway station in the world and the busiest located outside Japan, with 262 million passengers in 2015. Paris is especially known for its museums and architectural landmarks: the Louvre received 2.8 million visitors in 2021, despite the long museum closings caused by the COVID-19 virus. The Musée d’Orsay, Musée Marmottan Monet and Musée de l’Orangerie are noted for their collections of French Impressionist art. The Pompidou Centre Musée National d’Art Moderne has the largest collection of modern and contemporary art in Europe. The Musée Rodin and Musée Picasso exhibit the works of two noted Parisians. The historical district along the Seine in the city centre has been classified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1991; popular landmarks there include the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris on the Île de la Cité, now closed for renovation after the 15 April 2019 fire. Other popular tourist sites include the Gothic royal chapel of Sainte-Chapelle, also on the Île de la Cité; the Eiffel Tower, constructed for the Paris Universal Exposition of 1889; the Grand Palais and Petit Palais, built for the Paris Universal Exposition of 1900; the Arc de Triomphe on the Champs-Élysées, and the hill of Montmartre with its artistic history and its Basilica of Sacré-Coeur.
Paris hosts several United Nations organisations: the UNESCO, the Young Engineers / Future Leaders, the World Federation of Engineering Organizations, and other international organisations such as the OECD, the OECD Development Centre, the International Bureau of Weights and Measures, the International Energy Agency, the International Federation for Human Rights, the International Organisation of La Francophonie; along with European bodies such as the European Space Agency, the European Banking Authority or the European Securities and Markets Authority. Other international organisations were founded in Paris such as the CIMAC in 1951 (International Council on Combustion Engines | Conseil International des Machines à Combustion), or the modern Olympic Games in 1894 which was then moved to Lausanne, Switzerland.
The football club Paris Saint-Germain and the rugby union club Stade Français are based in Paris. The 80,000-seat Stade de France, built for the 1998 FIFA World Cup, is located just north of Paris in the neighbouring commune of Saint-Denis. Paris hosts the annual French Open Grand Slam tennis tournament on the red clay of Roland Garros. The city hosted the Olympic Games in 1900, 1924 and will host the 2024 Summer Olympics. The 1938 and 1998 FIFA World Cups, the 2007 Rugby World Cup, as well as the 1960, 1984 and 2016 UEFA European Championships were also held in the city. Every July, the Tour de France bicycle race finishes on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées in Paris. (Wikipedia)
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30 Color Photos of American Actress Pamela Tiffin in the 1960s
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Born 1942 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, American actress Pamela Tiffin was spotted by producer Hal B. Wallis, who had her screen tested. This led to her being cast in the film version of Summer and Smoke (1961), and then appeared in the comedy One, Two, Three (1961), directed by Billy Wilder who called her “the biggest find since Audrey Hepburn”. She earned a Golden Globe nomination for this film as well as one for Summer and Smoke.
20th Century Fox gave Tiffin the leading role in the musical State Fair (1962), and was one of the three leads in MGM’’s comedy Come Fly with Me (1963). She made two films with James Darren, both aimed at teen audiences: For Those Who Think Young (1964) and The Lively Set (1964).
In 1967, Tiffin decided to move to Italy “to find out what I want”. She appeared in The Protagonists (1968); Torture Me But Kill Me with Kisses (1968), a hugely popular comedy; and The Archangel (1969).
Tiffin released a memoir, Daring: My Passages with Gail Sheehy in 2014 and a biography of her life, Pamela Tiffin: Hollywood to Rome, was written by Tom Lisanti in 2015. She died in 2020, in a Manhattan hospital, at the age of 78.
Take a look at these glamorous photos to see the beauty of young Pamela Tiffin in the 1960s.
Rare Photos of Outdoor Portraits in the Mid-19th Century
The relatively low cost of the daguerreotype in the middle of the 19th century and the reduced sitting time for the subject, though still much longer than now, led to a general rise in the popularity of portrait photography over painted portraiture.
The style of these early works reflected the technical challenges associated with long exposure times and the painterly aesthetic of the time. Hidden mother photography, in which portrait photographs featured young children’s mothers hidden in the frame to calm them and keep them still, arose from this difficulty. Subjects were generally seated against plain backgrounds, lit with the soft light of an overhead window, and whatever else could be reflected with mirrors.
Advances in photographic technology since the daguerreotype spawned more advanced techniques, allowed photographers to capture images with shorter exposure times, and work outside a studio environment.
Here below is a set of rare photos that shows outdoor portraits of Victorian people from between the 1840s and 1870s.
