Vintage | MONOVISIONS - Black & White Photography Magazine

Vintage: Glass plate negative Family Portraits by Michael Miley Studio (early XX Century)

4 March 2019 0

Michael Miley (1841-1918) was a popular commercial photographer based in Lexington, Virginia. He is acclaimed for bringing artistry to the medium of photography and often sought to capture his subjects in more candid poses.

Vintage: Victorian Play “Death and the Lady” (1906)

1 March 2019 0

A vaudeville performance based on the old English ballad “Death and the Lady.” Photographed by Joseph Hall, 1906. In 1906, The Journal of the English Folk Song Society published a piece on the old English ballad “Death and the Lady.”…

Vintage: Old Hamburg (1910s)

27 February 2019 0

After periodic political unrest, particularly in 1848, Hamburg adopted in 1860 a semidemocratic constitution that provided for the election of the Senate, the governing body of the city-state, by adult taxpaying males. Other innovations included the separation of powers, the…

Vintage: Calcutta by Clyde Waddell (1945)

26 February 2019 0

Mr. Waddell was a military photographer. Many of his captions seems like annotations that would be found in a typical military magazine. The album begins with several general long shots of Calcutta and ends with a picture of dhobi-s (washermen)…

Vintage: American Beauty Queens (1920s)

21 February 2019 0

Beauty contests became more popular in the 1880s. In 1888, the title of ‘beauty queen’ was awarded to an 18-year-old Creole contestant at a pageant in Spa, Belgium. All participants had to supply a photograph and a short description of…

Vintage: Carnival Costumes in Berlin (1928)

17 February 2019 0

While Germany’s carnival traditions are mostly celebrated in the predominantly Roman Catholic southern and western parts of the country, the Protestant North traditionally knows a festival under the Low Saxon names Fastelavend, Fastelabend and Fastlaam. This name has been imported…

Vintage: Historic B&W photos of Middle East (19th Century)

15 February 2019 0

Large parts of the Middle East became a warground between the Ottomans and Iranian Safavids for centuries starting in the early 16th century. By 1700, the Ottomans had been driven out of Hungary and the balance of power along the…

Vintage: Decayed Daguerreotype Portraits by Mathew Brady Studio (19th Century)

12 February 2019 0

Mathew Brady is one of the most celebrated 19th-century American photographers, best known for his portraits of celebrities and his documentation of the American Civil War which earned him the title of “father of photojournalism”. The Library of Congress received…

Vintage: Historic B&W photos of Lisboa, Portugal (1890s)

10 February 2019 0

In the first years of the 19th century, Portugal was invaded by the troops of Napoléon Bonaparte, forcing Queen Maria I and Prince-Regent John (future John VI) to flee temporarily to Brazil. By the time the new King returned to…

Vintage: Portraits of Marion Davies – Silent Movie Star

5 February 2019 0

Marion Davies (1897 – 1961) was an American film actress. By the mid-1920s, however, Davies’ career was often overshadowed by her relationship with William Randolph Hearst and their social life at San Simeon and Ocean House in Santa Monica. The…

Vintage: Bugatti Cars (1920s and 1930s)

3 February 2019 0

Founder Ettore Bugatti was born in Milan, Italy, and the automobile company that bears his name was founded in 1909 in Molsheim located in the Alsace region which was part of the German Empire from 1871 to 1919. The company…

Vintage: Marlene Dietrich, Leni Riefenstahl and Anna May Wong at the Pierre Ball in Berlin, 1928

1 February 2019 0

Two beautiful and ambitious Berliners, born just eight months apart—Marie Magdalene Dietrich, on December 27, 1901; Bertha Helene Amalie Riefenstahl, on August 22, 1902—both bound to shape the fantasies and touch the histories of their time. Two girls growing up…

Vintage: Titanic before Its Sinking in 1912

23 January 2019 0

The passenger facilities aboard Titanic aimed to meet the highest standards of luxury. According to Titanic’s general arrangement plans, the ship could accommodate 833 First Class Passengers, 614 in Second Class and 1,006 in Third Class, for a total passenger…