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French photographer Catherine Leroy in between two soldiers in Vietnam

Catherine Leroy Parachutes into Danger

When the Pentagon wanted a photographer to record the largest airborne assault in the Vietnam War, the most qualified candidate was a young French woman.
by Elizabeth Becker via American Heritage on November 6, 2023
Photo of a homeless person sleeping on the street wrapped in a blanket on top of cardboard.
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A Blueprint From History for Tackling Homelessness

During the New Deal, the U.S. knew that economic recovery depended upon housing.
by Jonathan van Harmelen via Made by History on November 2, 2023
African Americans sitting on their front porch looking at a National Guardsman holding a rifle.

A Haunting Portrait of Newark’s Bloody Summer of Unrest

The photojournalist Bud Lee captured the riots of 1967 and the human cost of the brutal police crackdown.
by M. Z. Adnan via The New Yorker on July 29, 2023
Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc's self-immolation during the Vietnam War.

The Journalist Who Photographed the Burning Monk

The man behind an iconic Vietnam War image captured ‘the ugliest events of our time.'
by Ray E. Boomhower via Zócalo Public Square on June 8, 2023
Formal portrait photograph of a young Jackie Bouvier.

The Making of Jackie Kennedy

As a student in Paris and a photographer at the Washington Times-Herald, the future First Lady worked behind the lens to bring her own ideas into focus.
by Thomas Mallon via The New Yorker on May 1, 2023
Life Magazine Cover, August 25th 1967, featuring a U.S. Marine and an Injured Child in Vietnam.

Life Goes to Vietnam

Debunking claims that news media fueled public disillusionment and cost the US victory.
by Gregory A. Daddis via Process: A Blog for American History on March 29, 2023
A phot taken by Corkey Lee of an Asian woman dressed as the Statue of Liberty in front of a diamond store with a Statue of Liberty mural.

Corky Lee and the Work of Seeing

Lee's life and work suggested that Asian American identity did not possess—and did not need—any underlying reality beyond solidarity.
by Ken Chen via n+1 on January 25, 2023
Photograph of an African American family buying ice cream at a segregated ice cream shop

Gordon Parks' View of America Across Three Decades

Two new books and one expanded edition of Gordon Parks' photographs look at the work of the photographer from the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s.
by Robert E. Gerhardt via Blind on October 28, 2022
"Napalm Girl" Photo from Vietnam War

Myths Distort the Reality Behind a Horrific Photo of the Vietnam War and Exaggerate Its Impact

The ‘Napalm Girl’ photo is much more than powerful evidence of war’s indiscriminate effects on civilians.
by W. Joseph Campbell via The Conversation on June 2, 2022
FDNY firefighters in WTC wreckage

What Gilles Peress Saw on 9/11

The Magnum photographer looks back on capturing an “inconceivable event.”
by Margaret Talbot via The New Yorker on September 9, 2021
Anti-War and Anti-Fascist Demonstration In New York

Cameras for Class Struggle

How the radical documentarians of the Workers' Film and Photo League put their art in the service of social movements.
by Max Pearl via Art In America on April 21, 2021
A young girl kneels by a dead body, yelling.

The Girl in the Kent State Photo and the Lifelong Burden of Being a National Symbol

In 1970, an image of a dead protester at Kent State became iconic. But what happened to the 14-year-old kneeling next to him?
by Patricia McCormick via Washington Post Magazine on April 19, 2021

Photographer Lee Miller’s Subversive Career Took Her from Vogue to War-Torn Germany

She also acted as a muse to artist Man Ray, with whom she briefly led a relationship.
by Angelica Villa via Art In America on March 19, 2021
Gordon Park's photograph of law enforcement officers kicking in a door

When Crime Photography Started to See Color

Six decades ago, Gordon Parks, Life magazine’s first black photographer, revolutionized what a crime photo could look like.
by Bill Shapiro via The Atlantic on June 16, 2020
An image of President Donald Trump holding a Bible in front of a church.

The Dangerous Power of the Photo Op

American photojournalism has always been entangled with race and religion.
by Rachel McBride Lindsey via Arc: Religion, Politics, Et Cetera on June 9, 2020

The Lost World of Weegee

Depression-era Americans viewed urban life in America through the lens of Weegee’s camera.
by Terry Teachout via Commentary on August 1, 2018
Montana poster from the Works Projects Administration.

How WPA State Guides Fused the Essential and the Eccentric

Touring the American soul.
by Scott Borchert via Humanities on October 11, 2023
A photograph of a young Black boy riding a bicycle.

Re-thinking Black (Im)mobility

The bicycle is a symbol of youth, but in the mid-twentieth century it also symbolized Black joy and mobility.
by Nathan Cardon via Black Perspectives on September 20, 2023
George H.W. Bush, wearing a Yale baseball uniform, receives the manuscript of Babe Ruth’s autobiography.

In Babe Ruth’s Final Steps on Public Stage, Two Brushes With History

Babe Ruth's final days revealed his mortality, and made more history, when he encountered a future U.S. president.
by Frederic J. Frommer via Washington Post on June 13, 2023
illustration including "Napalm Girl" photo and photo of the photographer

The View from Here

Fifty years on, Nick Ut’s Pulitzer Prize–winning photograph, “Napalm Girl,” still has the power to shock. But can a picture change the world?
by Errol Morris via Air Mail on June 4, 2022
Photo of a man lying face down on a bed under a coat, and a sad woman sitting in a chair next to him. There is a hole punched out of the center of the photo.

The Kept and the Killed

Of the 270,000 photos commissioned to document the Great Depression, more than a third were “killed.” Explore the hole-punched archive and the void at its center.
by Erica X. Eisen via The Public Domain Review on January 26, 2022
President Obama in the Oval Office.

Pictures at a Restoration

On Pete Souza’s Obama.
by Blair McClendon via n+1 on August 10, 2021
Building with a currogated tin facade and sign saying "Richard Perkins Contractor"

The Anti-Nostalgia of Walker Evans

A recent biography reveals the many contradictions of the photographer who fastidiously documented postwar American life.
by Rahel Aima via The Nation on June 8, 2021
Survivors of the massacre looking through ruble

Photographing the Tulsa Massacre of 1921

Karlos K. Hill investigates the disturbing photographic legacy of the Tulsa massacre and the resilience of Black Wall Street’s residents.
by Karlos K. Hill via The Public Domain Review on May 21, 2021
Revenge of the Goldfish by Sandy Skoglund, 1981

Obscura No More

How photography rose from the margins of the art world to occupy its vital center.
by Andy Grundberg via The American Scholar on April 29, 2021
Person walks with Confederate flag in the U.S. Capitol

The Whole Story in a Single Photo

An image from the Capitol captures the distance between who we purport to be and who we have actually been.
by Clint Smith via The Atlantic on January 8, 2021
A Japanese mother and daughter, farmworkers in California, photographed in 1937 by Dorothea Lange

Whitewashing the Great Depression

How the preeminent photographic record of the period excluded people of color from the nation’s self-image.
by Sarah Boxer via The Atlantic on November 15, 2020

Things as They Are

Dorothea Lange created a vast archive of the twentieth century’s crises in America. For years her work was censored, misused, impounded, or simply rejected.
by Valeria Luiselli via New York Review of Books on October 29, 2020

When Is a Nazi Salute Not a Nazi Salute?

Were the celebrities in this 1941 photograph making a patriotic gesture or paying their respects to Hitler?
by Matt Seaton via New York Review of Books on July 25, 2020
Two men doing a "perp walk"
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Perp Walks: When Police Roll Out the Blue Carpet

Unfair maneuver or a strong warning to would-be criminals?
by Bonnie Bertram, Sandra McDaniel via Retro Report on December 2, 2018
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