http://www.newsweek.com/2010/10/04/a-collection-of-vernacular-and-historical-images.html Fascinating. I've seen lots of historic photographs in museums in London and Paris, especially in the Musée d'Orsay on the exhibition of earliest photography in France (1840-1860) and also very, very vintage nude and pornographic images (1860-1910) in another kind of museum. As grotesque and uncomfortable as some of the images seem to us now (dead people, slavery), those pictures make me feel closer to my, our, ancesters than any history book. Those crying women on one photo from 1875 look as young and beautiful as some I might see on the street today, but they're probably dead for at least 60 years. The same goes for old movies from the 1920's and earlier. Most of the actors don't live anymore, watching them is like a time window. I wonder what people will feel like when they watch movies from them 1970's, 1980's in 2100? Or when they play GTA IV in the year 2108? I'm quite sure the media will still exist in some form or another, just like vintage movies are now brought to us on DVD or online. "Realistic" games like GTA IV with all it's prominently featured pop-culture will be like an amazing time-machine.
The Burns Archive is incredible. I've seen a lot of the photos in that Newsweek link already, but there are some previously unseen images in there that are truly unforgettable. There are hundreds of gruesome pics in the Archive that Newsweek wouldn't dare to show – photos that would make your skin crawl!
I just looked at all the photos in that set, and read all of the descriptions. It is certainly eye-opening - thank you very much for sharing.
Boy how times have changed. Nice stroll through history there. Think of our children. There's a decent percentage of my son from ages 0 to 4 caught in both photographs and videos. I don't have a single video of myself as a child, and honestly, my family only has a couple of hundred pictures max of me from a child through high school. I probably have about 8,000 of my son already.
Yeah. I wonder what my son thinks when he sees himself on videos. When I was a kid only the unbelievably rich had a video camera.
