History is either something you love or something you hate, but what better way to appreciate it than by having a photograph to commemorate it. National archives and libraries from around the world have already started to release their photographs online for people to scrounge through. What is so beautiful about them, is that the photographer never usually paid much attention to how the photograph was constructed, but more so focused on documenting whatever event was going on in front of him/her.
What they left us with is now an astounding number of photographs documenting everything from tea parties, soldiers returning from the war, the great depression and school science trips. There is also costume dressing, potato baking and house moving. Photographers of the bygone era loved to capture people doing whatever felt natural to them. Not only did they capture people, but they loved photographing landscapes, technology and they were especially infatuated with anything that moved; especially trains (one of the first films to be made was of a train docking into a station and then proceeding to leave again).
So, we thought we’d share with you 20 photographs that we’ve found from the national archives and libraries of Ireland, Scotland, Queensland, New York and Brooklyn. The expressions on people’s faces, the clothes that they were wearing – they are all memories. They are all stories in somebody’s life.