The collection opens with a curious mixture of glamour and gravity—Carrie Fisher and her stunt double relaxing between takes on the set of Return of the Jedi in the early 1980s, Mata Hari posing as an exotic dancer in 1906, and James Dean at a Los Angeles party with Ursula Andress in 1955. John Lennon sits with his son Julian on a Honda Monkey motorcycle in the early seventies, while elsewhere the first miniskirts appear on the streets of Lithuania in 1965. Princess Elizabeth marries Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten on 20 November 1947, and Marilyn Monroe smiles from a photograph taken in the 1950s. Some images capture technological change.
A 1962 Motorola television with remote control is presented as one of the world’s great inventions before color broadcasting. John Lennon’s psychedelic Rolls-Royce Phantom 5 and George Harrison’s Mini Cooper S stand side by side, symbols of an era that blurred music, art, and celebrity. Alfred Hitchcock’s wife, Alma Reville, poses in 1972 with a wax cast of her husband’s head stored in the refrigerator. On the set of Jaws in 1974, a special effects technician repairs the teeth of the mechanical shark.
The photographs also record darker chapters. A family in Tokyo in 1947 displays the damage caused by the atomic bomb two years earlier in Hiroshima. A father and son from the same German regiment read letters from their respective wife and mother at the front in 1915. Berlin lies in ruins at the end of the Second World War.
Food rationing is documented in Britain during the same conflict. A Japanese emperor inspects a large acoustic detector built to catch the sound of approaching aircraft. An American marine offers a cigarette to a buried Japanese soldier in the 1960s. A German pilot falls from a burning aircraft in 1914.
A cemetery of the 4th US Marine Division on Iwo Jima is photographed in March 1945. Other images reveal the human cost of economic disaster. Walter Thornton, a bankrupt investor, tries to sell his luxury Chrysler Imperial 75 Roadster for one hundred dollars on the streets of New York City on 29 October 1929, the day of the Wall Street crash. In Germany in 1923, the mark becomes so worthless that wallpaper is made from it; children play with stacks of banknotes.
Boys fish for coins in New York during the Great Depression in 1930, and a family stands before their home during those same hard years. Central Park appears quiet and worn in 1933. Some photographs are simply strange or playful. Two boys absorbed in comic books are photographed outside on the street in 1952.
A child hangs from a clothesline in Paris. Three young women enjoy an open-air salon in 1958. A circus strongman feeds a giraffe by lifting the sun in a clever optical illusion. Children play with a rope and a lamppost.
A man experiences a moment of irony, as the caption puts it, in 1966. Miss Kitty from the television series Gunsmoke appears in one frame, and Clint Eastwood rides a skateboard in Rome in 1965. Several images involve notable figures before they became famous. A teenage Vladimir Putin appears in a photograph from the 1960s.
Tom Cruise is seen on a high school campus in the 1970s. Nicole Kidman displays her distinctive eighties curls. Matt Dillon poses in 1980. Joe Biden appears in a photograph from 1961.
Al Pacino is shown as the New York officer Frank Serpico in the 1973 film. Stephen Hawking stands with his wife Jane Wilde in 1965. Anthony Bourdain prepares a meal in his New York apartment in 1986. Bob Ross, later known for The Joy of Painting, had previously served as a master sergeant in the United States Air Force.
Musical history runs through the collection. The Beastie Boys chase Madonna across a stage with water pistols in 1985. Debbie Harry appears in Tokyo in 1978. A young Gordon Lightfoot is interviewed by Alex Trebek on Canadian television in 1963.
Members of The Runaways and David Lee Roth speak at a radio station in Pasadena in 1978. REO Speedwagon is photographed in 1979. Bunny Wailer, Bob Marley, and Peter Tosh appear together in 1964. Jim Morrison records in the studio during the LA Woman sessions in 1970.
The original lineup of Black Sabbath is captured in 1973. Charles Bronson and Jill Ireland appear in 1968. Elton John visits the eighteen-year-old AIDS patient Ryan White at his bedside. War and conflict appear repeatedly.
Two men of the 363rd Field Artillery Battalion stand near Okinawa on 10 June 1945. Red Army guards work in the Soviet Union in 1925. Mujahideen use air-filled leather bags to cross a river in 1980. A heavily armed German grenadier stands in the Champagne region.
A drummer named Johnny Clim famously killed a Confederate colonel. An officer poses with two canaries in 1918. Hop-pickers work on stilts in Faversham, England, in 1920. A mine worker’s child attends elementary school in Kentucky in 1946.
A steelworker waves to a colleague on the eighty-eighth floor of the new Empire State Building in 1930. Maintenance crews repair the Graf Zeppelin over the ocean during a transatlantic crossing in the early 1930s. The collection also includes moments of genuine courage and tragedy. In 1974, Philippe Petit walks on a tightrope between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center.
In 1981, Muhammad Ali saves a man from suicide. In 1963, the Bronx Zoo presents an exhibit of the most dangerous animal in the world—a mirror. The eleven-year-old Finnish boy Niilo Lindström ran away from home during the Continuation War in order to help fight the Soviets at the northern front. The daughter of an Indian maharaja poses with a panther.
A father impresses his daughter with his skills in Melbourne in the 1940s. Hippie culture is captured in Amsterdam in 1968, where a father and his daughter sit together, and George Harrison and Pattie Boyd visit Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco during the Summer of Love in 1967. Technological and scientific milestones appear as well. Wilbur Wright lands his glider near Kitty Hawk in 1901.
In 1961, the chimpanzee Ham endures seventeen g-forces when his rocket malfunctions during a test flight. One of the world’s first fitness machines, designed by Dr. Gustav Zander, stands in Stockholm in 1892. Gary Anderson, a twenty-three-year-old student, designs the recycling logo for a competition in 1970.
A vision of the future from the 1930s shows how earlier generations imagined what was to come. Celebrity and film culture is richly documented. Jerry Lewis, Adam West, Dick Shawn, Connie Stevens, Cesar Romero, and Jane Wald appear on the set of Batman in 1966. Suzanne Somers poses in 1979.
Sophia Loren is photographed at eighteen and again in a summer outfit that turned heads. Ann-Margret shows more than her acting talent. Lynda Carter wears a revealing swimsuit for Battle of the Network Stars and later steals the show at the Emmy Awards in 1977. Johnny Carson appears in the Tonight Show in 1974.
Dean Martin celebrates his fiftieth birthday on the set of the western Bandolero in 1967. Arnold Schwarzenegger stands between Wilt Chamberlain and Andre the Giant on the set of Conan the Destroyer in 1984, and in 1969 he walks through Munich to promote his new gym. Bill Murray plays Hunter S. Thompson in Where the Buffalo Roam in 1980.
A scene from the British science fiction series UFO appears from 1970. The cast of The Bob Newhart Show is photographed in 1972. Dawn Wells, Miss Nevada 1958, stands with Mr. Blackwell at the Miss America pageant.
Cybill Shepherd appears in 1972. Jack Nicholson and Anjelica Huston are captured as a couple in the 1970s. The empire strikes back is filmed in London in 1980. Al Pacino is seen as the New York officer Frank Serpico in the 1973 film.
Other images reveal daily life in another time. Stewardesses pose in an empty airplane in the 1960s. A couple sits in a Model T Ford at Balanced Rock, Colorado, in the 1920s. Chief Dust Maker of the Ponca tribe appears in northern Nebraska in 1898.
A family displays the damage from the Hiroshima bombing in Tokyo in 1947. A local businessman rents chairs for ten cents in Constantinople in 1920. An American soldier always carries a photograph of his girlfriend. A woman works on a car while her husband is away at war in 1944.
Children play Push the Peanut in King’s Cross in 1938. The Owls, a Black women’s softball team from the 1930s, are shown together. The beach at Miami Beach appears in the 1940s. The train wreck at the Montparnasse station in Paris is photographed on 22 October 1895.
An electric chair is shown in 1908. The collection closes with a farmer’s family gathering for dinner in Claiborne County in 1940. The journey through these one hundred photographs moves from the lighthearted to the somber, from the famous to the forgotten, but together they preserve a century of human experience in all its variety.