Category: landscape

The flower seller, Chartres

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Le marché aux fleurs, Chartres, France, August 19, 1922, by Auguste Léon, via Archives of the Planet Collection – Albert Kahn Museum /Département des Hauts-de-Seine.

One of my favorite blogs, It’s About Time by garden historian Barbara Wells Sarudy, is currently posting a series on paintings of flower sellers by American artists. Check it out here.

The autochrome above is one of about seventy-two thousand that were commissioned and then archived by Albert Kahn, a wealthy French banker, between 1909 and 1931. Kahn sent thirteen photographers and filmmakers to fifty countries “to fix, once and for all, aspects, practices, and modes of human activity whose fatal disappearance is no longer ‘a matter of time.'”* The resulting collection is called Archives de la Planète and now resides in its own museum at Kahn’s old suburban estate at Boulogne-Billancourt, just west of Paris. Since June 2016, the archive has also been available for viewing online here.

*words of Albert Kahn, 1912. Also, the above photos (A 33804 S) are © Collection Archives de la Planète – Musée Albert-Kahn and used under its terms, here.

Östersund, Sweden

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“The Bathhouse Park (Badhusparken) in sunshine,” Östersund, Sweden, ca. 1950, by Lundberg of Almquist & Cöster, via Swedish National Heritage Board Commons on flickr

Yonkers, New York

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“Mr. Garrity building a wading pool in the backyard for his children,” Yonkers, New York, 1942, by Arthur Rothstein for U.S. Office of War Information, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Huariaca, Peru

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Town hall and fountain, possibly near Huariaca, Peru, 1923, by J. Francis Macbride or George Bryan on a botany expedition to South America, via The Field Museum Library Commons on flickr.

I like the light fixture at the top of the fountain.

The Sunday porch: Paterson, New Jersey

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“Street of homes in the inner city of Paterson, New Jersey,” June 1974, by Danny Lyon for DOCUMERICA, via The U.S. National Archives Commons on flickr (both photos).

Lyon‘s original caption continues: “The inner city today is an absolute contradiction to the Main Stream America of gas stations, expressways, shopping centers and tract homes. It is populated by Blacks, Latins and the white poor. Most of all, the inner city environment is human beings, as beautiful and threatened as the 19th century buildings.”

DOCUMERICA was an photography program of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). From 1972 to 1977, it hired over 100 photographers to “document subjects of environmental concern.” They created an archive of about 80,000 images. In addition to recording damage to the nation’s landscapes, the project captured “the era’s trends, fashions, problems, and achievements,” according to the Archives, which held an exhibit of the photos, “Searching for the Seventies,” in 2013.

You can see more of Lyon’s photos for DOCUMERICA here.