1920s

Vintage: Panoramic photos of New Zealand by Robert Percy Moore (1920s)

Vintage: Panoramic photos of New Zealand by Robert Percy Moore (1920s)

Robert Percy Moore is considered to be New Zealand’s greatest panorama photographer. He travelled extensively photographing homesteads, public events, royal visits, groups, and urban and rural scenery. 2489 of his panoramic negatives are held at the Alexander Turnbull Library. During World War I he was a travelling photographer in Queensland producing postcard views.
Vintage: Trams in Poland (1920s)

Vintage: Trams in Poland (1920s)

The history of tram transport in Poland dates back to 1866 when a 6-kilometre long horsecar line was built in Warsaw to transport goods and passengers between the Vienna Railway Station and the Wilno and Terespol stations across the Vistula River. This was in order to circumvent limitations imposed by Russian authorities, which prevented the construction of a railway bridge…
Vintage: Greta Garbo Portraits (1920s-1930s)

Vintage: Greta Garbo Portraits (1920s-1930s)

Greta Garbo was a Swedish-born American film actress and an international star and icon during the 1920s and 1930s. Born in Stockholm, Sweden, she was the youngest of three children of a working class family. In 1920, she took a job as a salesperson at the leading Swedish department store, PUB, a job which led to her appearance in two…
Vintage: The Golden Twenties in Berlin (1920s)

Vintage: The Golden Twenties in Berlin (1920s)

1920s Berlin was a city of many social contrasts. While a large part of the population continued to struggle with high unemployment and deprivations in the aftermath of World War I, the upper class of society, and a growing middle class, gradually rediscovered prosperity and turned Berlin into a cosmopolitan city.
Vintage: New York’s Bohemian Greenwich Village (1910s – 1920s)

Vintage: New York’s Bohemian Greenwich Village (1910s – 1920s)

Jessie Tarbox Beals (1870 – 1942) was an American photographer, the first published female photojournalist in the United States mostly known for her portraits of places such as Bohemian Greenwich Village. Greenwich Village became widely identified as America’s bohemia by the mid-1910s. The radicals who lived in Greenwich Village in the early 20th century rejected traditional structured socialization, preferring instead…
Glass Plate Female Mugshots from Australia

Glass Plate Female Mugshots from Australia

In 1990 the Historic Houses Trust rescued a remarkable collection of NSW Police forensic photographs from a flooded warehouse in Lidcombe. Created between 1912 and 1964, the archive contains approximately 130,000 glass plate negatives depicting crime scenes, police activities, forensic evidence and mug shots and may be the biggest police photography collection in the southern hemisphere. The Historic Houses Trust…
History of Mercedes-Benz in Motorsport

History of Mercedes-Benz in Motorsport

From the first automotive competition in history to its return to the Formula One championship with a works team for the 2010 season, the racing activities of Mercedes-Benz tell a success story that has its roots in the early days of the automobile. Since the 19th century, racing cars, racing sports cars and rally cars made in Stuttgart have consistently…
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is a 1920 German silent horror film, directed by Robert Wiene and written by Hans Janowitz and Carl Mayer. Considered the quintessential work of German Expressionist cinema, it tells the story of an insane hypnotist (Werner Krauss) who uses a somnambulist (Conrad Veidt) to commit murders. The film features a dark and twisted visual style,…
Vintage French Erotic Postcards (1920s)

Vintage French Erotic Postcards (1920s)

A French postcard is a small, postcard-sized piece of cardstock featuring a photograph of a nude or semi-nude woman. Such erotic cards were produced in great volume, primarily in France, in the late 19th and early 20th century. The term was adopted in the USA, where such cards were not legally made.
40 Glass Plate Mugshots from the 1920s

40 Glass Plate Mugshots from the 1920s

These are wife killers, petty thieves, dealers of fake opium, hustlers – plucked from the street by the police of 1920s Sydney, Australia and photographed, fresh from the scene of the crime. These photographs reveal a lot more than the usual mugshot. The suspects strike poses. A few look disheveled and deranged, but some look decidedly guilty. They lean casually into…
Vintage: Wall Street bombing in 1920

Vintage: Wall Street bombing in 1920

At 12:01pm on Thursday, September 16th, 1920, a blast shook the Financial District of New York City immediately killing 30 people, with another 8 to die later of wounds sustained in the blast. On top of the dead, there were 143 people seriously injured with the total number injured measuring in the hundreds. This event was the deadliest act of…
Vintage: Poland during Interwar period (1918-1939)

Vintage: Poland during Interwar period (1918-1939)

The History of interwar Poland comprises the period from the re-recreation of the independent Polish state in 1918, until the joint Invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in 1939 at the onset of World War II. The two decades of Poland’s sovereignty between the world wars are known as the Interbellum.
Vintage: Motor Racing from the 1920s-30s

Vintage: Motor Racing from the 1920s-30s

Donald James Harkness, pioneer in the Australian automotive and aeronautical industries, racing driver and record breaker, was born in Leichhardt, NSW in December 1898. On leaving school he became an apprentice in general engineering. At the age of 20 he secured employment at J.C. Hillier’s garage at Drummoyne and in 1922 the partnership of Harkness & Hillier Pty Ltd was…
Vintage: photos of Ku Klux Klan Parade in 1920s

Vintage: photos of Ku Klux Klan Parade in 1920s

The Ku Klux Klan was a secret organization; apart from a few top leaders the members never revealed their membership and wore masks in public. Investigators in the 1920s used KKK publicity, court cases, exposés by disgruntled Klansman, newspaper reports, and speculation to write stories about what the Klan was doing. Almost all the major newspapers and magazines were hostile.…