On the streets of New York with a pushcart, this fellow tries to sell nuts and raisins to the passers-by. Ten cents, just ten cents is all he asks. He has a cigar in his mouth, but it doesn’t look like it’s lit — they last longer that way. The edge of the pushcart tray is carefully decorated with what looks suspiciously like chili peppers — suggesting this may not be the original use for this cart, perhaps not the original owner. The sixty years that separate us from this scene leave us only guesses as to how he came to this.

The photograph was taken for the New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper in 1947 by staff photographer Fred Palumbo. Fred Palumbo was born about 1905 in France of Italian parents. He came to the U.S.A. with his parents and siblings in 1910. An elder brother, born about 1895 was born in Italy, and a sister born about 1904 was born in Paraguay. Clearly, the 1910 arrival in New York was the family’s second attempt to settle in the New World. The 1930 census shows Fred was a photographer, but doesn’t list is place of employment. By the late 1930s through the 1950s he was working for the newspaper cited for this image.

This public domain image of the famed Geronimo is a bit different from most you see, here he is an old man, looking worn rather than fierce. Twenty years earlier he was harassing both United States and Mexican armies with his little band of followers. Never considered a chief among his people, he was as ruthless as he was cunning, and a brilliant military strategist. It was only with the help of Apache trackers that the U.S. army was finally able to find and capture him.

This photo was taken at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo New York in 1901 by Charles Dudley Arnold. We profiled Arnold in a post last October from that same Exposition, Temple of Music.

This very interesting public domain image shows the children of Captain (at that time, later Brigadier General) Montgomery C. Meigs. Meigs was with the Corps of Engineers, and in 1850 when this image was taken, was assigned to oversee the construction of Fort Wayne in Detroit, Michigan. In fact, it was Meigs who selected the site and arranged for the government to purchase the land where the fort stands, on the Detroit River. From the looks of the buildings in this photo, and the fact that there is water visible in the background, this was probably taken on the grounds of Fort Wayne, where their father was working. (Curiously enough, I was on those grounds a bit over 120 years later as an archaeology student, participating in test excavations at the site.)

A note in the case of this daguerreotype identifies the children as (left to right) Mary Montgomery Meigs (later Mrs. Taylor), Charles Meigs, Vincent Meigs, and John Rodgers Meigs. It was General Meigs who recommended that property in Arlington Virginia owned by Mary Custis Lee, the wife of the confederate General, Robert E. Lee, should be used as a burial ground for U.S. Military casualties of the then raging Civil War. Arlington National Cemetery was established there in 1864. One of those buried there during the first year of use was First Lieutenant John Rodgers Meigs, the little boy leading the donkey, killed in October 1864.

The photographer for this image is unknown.

Here is a photochrom image from right around 1900 of the majestic Yosemite Valley. This was the first really practical color photo technology, it produced images so real as to almost seem surreal. Here the rocks look hard, the water wet and the tiny opening in the canopy in the middle of the valley looks invitingly fresh, one can almost smell the pine forests and wild grasses.

This public domain photograph is by William Henry Jackson, one of the few historic photographers almost everybody is familiar with. We posted another image by Jackson earlier: Mule in Havana another beautiful photochrom. As we said there, so much has been written about W H Jackson there is little left for us to add, his work speaks for itself.

This dramatic image of Rancho de Taos Mission in New Mexico shows how artistic the black and white photograph can be in the hands of an experienced photographer. The tonal range is excellent with the darkest black shadows on the left, and purest white reflection on the corner toward the right, and every shade of gray in-between.

The photographer for this public domain image was Laura Gilpin (1891-1979), well-known for her anthropologically oriented photographs of the southwestern states and Mexico. It was published/copyrighted in 1930, and the copyright was allowed to lapse when it was up for renewal in 1956, before the copyright law was amended to give longer protection. (Images as late as 1963 may be in the public domain, if they were copyrighted and published, but the copyright was not renewed). Laura Gilpin studied photography at the Clarence H White school in New York city, and published several books of photographs. In one, she wrote:

Many enter the field of photography with the impulse to record a scene. They often fail to realize that what they wish to do is to record the emotion felt upon viewing that scene.