Vintage | MONOVISIONS - Black & White Photography Magazine

Historic B&W photos of St. Petersburg, Russia in the 19th Century

22 September 2015 0

With the emancipation of the peasants undertaken by Alexander II in 1861 and an industrial revolution, the influx of former peasants into the capital increased greatly. Poor boroughs spontaneously emerged on the outskirts of the city. Saint Petersburg surpassed Moscow…

The Mummy (1932)

19 September 2015 0

The Tutankhamen Exhibition toured the world in the 1920s and 1930s, and the concept of Egyptologists suffering the effects of an ancient curse was part of contemporary urban legend. Audiences were fascinated by the concept of 3000 year old remains,…

Manchuria / Northeast Asia in 1930s

15 September 2015 0

Manchuria is a modern name given to a large geographic region in Northeast Asia. Depending on the definition of its extent, Manchuria usually falls entirely within China, or is sometimes divided between China and Russia. The region is now usually…

40 Glass Plate Mugshots from the 1920s

7 September 2015 0

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…

Vintage: Paris Under Water (1910)

5 September 2015 0

The 1910 Great Flood of Paris was a catastrophe in which the Seine River, carrying winter rains from its tributaries, flooded Paris agglomeration, France. The Seine water level rose eight meters above the ordinary level. Winter floods were a normal…

London in the Blackout (1939)

1 September 2015 0

Even before World War II began, the British Air Ministry had predicted that the United Kingdom would be bombed at night by German air forces. One of the very few precautions the nation could take was the elimination of man-made…

Historic B&W photos of Glasgow, Scotland (19th century)

31 August 2015 0

Glasgow became one of the first cities in Europe to reach a population of one million. The city’s new trades and sciences attracted new residents from across the Lowlands and the Highlands of Scotland, from other parts of Britain and…

Movie Theatre Etiquette Posters from 1912

29 August 2015 0

The Library of Congress has a fascinating series of vintage movie theatre “etiquette” posters from 1912. At the time, films were silent as movies with sound didn’t become prevalent until the late 1920s. Sadly, a September 2013 report by the…

Vintage Daguerreotype portraits from XIX Century (1844 – 1860)

28 August 2015 0

Mathew B. Brady (1822 – 1896) was one of the first American photographers, who pioneered the daguerreotype technique in America. Brady opened his own studio in New York in 1844, and photographed Andrew Jackson and John Quincy Adams, among other…

The 1934 floods in Los Angeles

26 August 2015 0

The Montrose flood, as the calamity soon came to be called, took at least 45 lives, destroyed about 100 homes and turned the little community into a mud-filled, barren landscape, said local historian Art Cobery, who has become an expert…

Behind the Scenes: The Birds (1963)

24 August 2015 0

The Birds is a 1963 suspense/horror film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, loosely based on the 1952 story “The Birds” by Daphne du Maurier. It depicts Bodega Bay, California, which is, suddenly and for unexplained reasons, the subject of a series…

Vintage: King Kong (1933)

18 August 2015 0

Merian C Cooper, the visionary behind the chest-thumping giant gorilla atop the Empire State, was a remarkable man. An old school adventurer, he could list World War I flying ace, POW, journalist, explorer, airline owner and Oscar-nominated documentary-maker on his…