Daily Clicks - Old and Found Photos

Have been thinking about spooky images lately. Like that scene at the end of The Shining, with the slow push zoom towards that group photo at the Overlook in 1924(?): 





And can't you just hear the trills of "Midnight, With the Stars and You"...? Here's the scene. I recall the first twenty times I saw that film, that bit gave me the willies about as much as Grady with his unfortunate head wound in the mirror. 


I was thinking about that scene this weekend, and about old photos. Don't we all just love old photographs? I used to love to slink around antique shops in Ohio and Tennessee, pawing for old photos, making up stories in my head about the strangers caught forever on film. There are several places online to do this right from the relative comfort of your computer, and I'll share a few that I frequent. In the coming weeks I'm going to dig out more, and if anyone has any suggestions...comment them here please and thank you. 


#1: http://foundphotos.com: My knowledge of this site is relatively new, but thanks to Katie in Australia I'm a convert. Unfortunately it hasn't been updated in a while but there's enough in the archive to click for a while if you've never visited before. These aren't very old photos, just candid, random, and fascinating.  


#2 Shorpy: Oh, I'm a huge, huge fan of Shorpy!! Nicely organized, nice collection, nice feature to zoom into a high-res version and really explore each image. The other evening I was just totally engrossed in their collection of Dorothea Lange photographs, exploring some of the ones that I wasn't familiar with, like Wapato Ennui: 

1939 - Dorothea Lange


and 535-07-5248 and Wife:



1939- Dorothea Lange


Dear Lord the STORIES in those images! Shorpy categorizes photos by photographer, era, "Pretty Girls", World War Two, Civil War, Kodachrome and tons more. 
#3 Albert's Eye:  I know next to nothing about Albert's Eye, I can't even tell you how I FOUND Albert's Eye - a beautiful flickr photostream full of vintage charm. Some of my favorite sets are St. Vincent's Orphanage (there's the beautiful and heartbreaking), American Studio Portraits, and In the Photobooth.



The beauty and heartbreak of humanity is all over these collections. I hope you feel as grounded and grateful of life when you browse them as much as I do...
Coincidentally, if it's vintage Photobooth images you love, here's a wonderful little book with a nice collection of them: 



         Photobooth - Babette Hines. 


*I've added the above links and a few more to the Reference Library page*


UPDATE: Thank you Princess Sarah for the following links: 
Black and WTF 
Vintage Child Abuse

As evening deepens, I seem to walk straight into the bizarre

So I'm going to share it here, what's the point of keeping it all cooped up inside? If it festers, it might metastasize and burst. Or worse! I'll forget about it and it will be buried forever in my bookmarks.


I found the blog A Journey Around My Skull around six months ago on a late evening (just like this). My brain works in quick fits and starts when the clock turns past midnight and I seem to pick up some sort of bizarro signal from the internet. My first visit I was on for about an hour, clicking away at the visually pleasing in a dada - ish surreal way shown in posts like this and this, and images like this:


 
Jiri Trnka, illus. for Fireflies, 1969 - Thank you A Journey Round My Skull person


It was the author's focus on vintage European picture books that initially drew me in (though how I found the site I can't divulge - I'm not even sure how I find the things I do. Luck? If so, good or bad?) and the rich, macabre, image-laden posts kept me clicking with interest longer than most blogs I happen upon. Even design ones, and I can click a design blog to bits (yeah, I'm talking to you, AT).


So here I'm sharing it. I've forwarded it several times to those friends of mine who enjoy a bit of the disturbingly beautiful, like my friend Tony. If I don't share I might forget it exists, and where does that leave you? Without a cool site to wind down an afternoon with while avoiding spreadsheets. 


PS! Will from Journey Round My Skull has a hypnagogic photo stream on Flickr that's highly enjoyable. Here it is in all its nicely categorized glory. 


PPS! I'm guessing the title " A Journey Round My Skull " is a nod to the perhaps original medical memoir of the same title.  It's a topic I'm quite taken with, the effects of brain tumors both benign and malignant on the senses (and the formation of hallucinations visual, auditory, olfactory, etc.) I haven't read it (yet) but you can bet I'm opening up a new tab as I type this to put in on hold at the library (I had to do it Interlibrary Loan, by the way).