Weegee, [Kangaroo lying on its side], ca. 1953

In honor of Australia Day, here’s Weegee’s wonderfully weird picture of a kangaroo, the country’s national symbol.

Danny Lyon, From Dayton to Columbus, Ohio, 1966

Danny Lyon, My Triumph, broken gearbox spring, New Orleans, 1964

Danny Lyon, Memorial day run, Milwaukee, 1966

Danny Lyon, Zipco, Elkhorn, Wisconsin, 1966

Danny Lyon published his series The Bikeriders in 1968. The book contains photographs and personal interviews collected by Lyon during his time spent with the Chicago Outlaw Motorcycle Club from 1963 to 1967.

In the introduction to the book Lyon writes, “The material in this book was collected between 1963 and 1967 in an attempt to record and glorify the life of the American bikerider. It is a personal record, dealing mostly with bikeriders whom I know and care for. If anything has guided this work beyond the facts of the worlds presented it is what I have come to believe is the spirit of the bikeriders: the spirit of the hand that twists open the throttle on the crackling engines of big bikes and rides them on racetracks or through traffic or, on occasion, into oblivion.”

Lyon’s work was influential in terms of his approach to photojournalism while also focusing attention to the growing interest in American bike culture.

New York Chinese Welcome New Year to Pell Street in a Snowstorm
In the Chinese calendar, today is New Year’s – the 4639th, and the 30th of the Chinese Republic [year of the White Metal Snake]. Chinatown welcomed it at midnight with the traditional lion dance to drive away evil spirits. Weegee made this photo of the ceremony from a fire escape above the headquarters of the Hip Sing Chinese Association, 15 Pell St. The lion is animated by Richard Fong, 18, a University of California student who came east for the occasion, and Norman Lum, 26, a native New Yorker. This is the first time American-born Chinese have played lead roles in the ancient rite.

Bill Wood, [Girl licking stamps], 1968

Don’t forget that new U.S. postal rates go into effect today!

Andreas Feininger, The Gyro Globe Coney Island, New York, 1949

GYRO GLOBE, a metal monster which simultaneously spins and tilts its victims, looks weird enough by day, becomes a fantastic skein of light threads at night. Billed as the only one of its kind in the world, it is known as a “laughing ride.”
Life, August 22, 1949, p. 54

Andreas Feininger, The Hurricane, Coney Island, New York, 1949

HURRICANE, one of the most frightening and popular rides anywhere, is a favorite with the ladies. “Time after time,” says operator of octopuslike steel contraption, “I see them stumbling out, still screaming. Ten minutes later they’re back for more.”
Life, August 22, 1949, p. 54

CONEY ISLAND
Its stomach-curdling rides make beautiful light patterns at night.
In 1884 at New York’s Coney Island a grocer from Elkhart, Ind. named Lamarcus A. Thompson [LaMarcus Adna Thompson (1848-1919), inventor of the Thompson Scenic Railway and founder of the L. A. Thompson Scenic Railway Company, 220 West 42nd St. - now the world's largest McDonalds] built the world’s first amusement railway–a train of small cars which rolled down an undulating track. Having built this forerunner of all roller coasters, Thompson shortly discovered that roller-coaster turns which hurled ladies into their escorts’ laps were a great boon to romance and the cash register. Coney Island soon broke out in a rash of daring rides bearing names like Channel Chute, Drop the Dip, Double Whirl, the celebrated $400,000 Loop the Loop, which failed because it looked too scary, and the Cannon Coaster of 1901, which advertised, “WILL SHE THROW HER ARMS AROUND YOUR NECK? WELL, I GUESS, YES!”
Since then the ride has become a fixture of the American scene. By day Coney Island’s grotesque jumble of rides are a blot on the landscape. But at night, their lights whirling, they become patterns of singular beauty… Photographers Andreas Feininger and Jerry Cooke spent several uncomfortable evenings at Coney Island… both men came away with far more eloquent testimonials to Builder Thompson than the inscription which for years hung over the entrance to one of Coney’s roller coasters: “This Ride is a Memorial to Lamarcus A. Thompson, Inventor of Gravity.”
Life, August 22, 1949, p. 53

An (illustrated) article, “A Combined Gravity and Cable System for the Operation of Elevated Railways in Cities,” The Manufacturer and Builder, Vol. 20, Issue 10, October 1888, pp. 234-35, about Thompson’s railway system and how it can used used to improve urban rapid transit, can be read here.

Read more about the history of Coney Island here, here, and here.

Jacob Riis, Bottle Alley, Mulberry Bend. Headquarters of the Whyo Gang, ca. 1888-98

This picture was evidence at a murder trial. The X marks the place where the murderer stood when he shot his victim on the stairs… In fifteen years I never knew a week to pass without a murder there… it was the wickedest, as it was the foulest, spot in all the city… The old houses fairly reeked with outrage and violence. When they were torn down, I counted seventeen deeds of blood in that place which I myself remembered… The district attorney connected more than a score of murders of his own recollection with Bottle Alley, the Whyo Gang’s headquarters. The Battle with the Slum, 1902.

This was in the Sixth Ward, where the infamous Whyo Gang until a few years ago absorbed the worst depravity of the Bend and what is left of the Five Points. The gang was finally broken up when its leader was hanged for murder after a life of uninterrupted and unavenged crimes, the recital of which made his father confessor turn pale, listening in the shadow of the scaffold, though many years of labor as chaplain of the Tombs had hardened him to such rehearsals. The great Whyno had been a “power in the ward,” handy at carrying elections for the party of faction that happened to stand in need of his services and was willing to pay for them in money or in kind. Other gangs have sprung up since with as high ambition and a fair prospect of outdoing their predecessor.

Jacob A Riis, How the Other Half Lives, Studies Among the Tenements of New York, p. 104

Bottle Alley is around the corner in Baxter Street; but it is a fair specimen of its kind, wherever found. Look into any of these houses, everywhere the same piles of rags, of malodorous bones and musty paper, all of which the sanitary police flatter themselves they have banished to the dumps and the warehouses. Here is a “flat” of “parlor” and two pitch-dark coops called bedrooms. Truly, the bed is all there is room for. The family tea-kettle is on the stove, doing duty for the time being as a wash-boiler. By night it will have returned to its proper use again, a practical illustration of how poverty in “the Bend” makes both ends meet. One, two, three beds are there, if the old boxes and heaps of foul straw can be called by that name; a broken stove with crazy pipe from which the smoke leaks at every joint, a table of rough boards propped up on boxes, piles of rubbish in the corner. The closeness and smell are appalling. How many people sleep here? The woman with the red bandanna shakes her head sullenly, but the bare-legged girl with the bright face counts on her fingers–five, six!

Jacob A. Riis, How the Other Half Lives, New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1971, p. 54

Jacob Riis, Rear tenement in Mott St., scene of an unavenged murder, ca. 1888-98

To this tenement my business as a police reporter led me. A home had been murdered there: a drunken husband had killed his wife. I know it is a common belief that drunkenness accounts for pretty nearly all the poverty there is. I do not find it so. It did in this case and there are enough such and to spare; but I think the verdict of the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor, once upon a time, came nearer the truth, namely, that forty percent. of the helpless poverty was due to drunkenness, or the drunkenness due to the poverty. I forget the exact way they put it, but that was the sense of it, and it was good sense.

Jacob A. Riis, The Peril and Preservation of the Home. Philadelphia: G.W. Jacobs & Co., 1903, pp. 104-105

Benedict J. Fernandez, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. addresses the crowd outside the United Nations, April 15, 1967

Paul Schutzer, [Martin Luther King Jr. addressing Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom, in front of the Lincoln Memorial, Washington, D.C.], May 17, 1957

Marvin Koner, Martin Luther King and Family, 1961

Bruce Davidson, [Martin Luther King Jr. at a press conference, Birmingham], 1962

Charles Moore, Martin Luther King arrest in Montgomery, Alabama, 1958

Unidentified Photographer, “Jeff Davis and His Last Ditch,” ca. 1865

Unidentified Photographer, Jeff Davis in disguise, as he appeared at the time of his capture, 1865

Francis Hacker, Jeff’s Soliloquy, to be or Not to be (hanged) that’s the question, 1865

William H. Mumler, (Extract from letter to Europe) “We are about making a movement that will astonish the world,” J.D., 1865

Shaw, [Jefferson Davis in Women's Clothing Being Captured by Union Troops], 1865

Slightly less than 150 years ago, the American Civil War was grinding to a dispiriting and unheroic end. After the surrender of General Robert E. Lee’s rebel forces and the shocking assassination of President Abraham Lincoln in mid-April 1865, the Confederate President Jefferson Davis was a political fugitive and the future of the Union remained uncertain. At dawn on May 10, 1865, a contingent of Michigan cavalry captured Davis in a makeshift camp just outside Irwinville, Georgia. In trying to flee, Davis had grabbed his wife’s cape and shawl rather than his own. Instantly, news reports circulated that Davis had been apprehended in women’s clothes and that he was attempting to disguise himself as a woman. Northern artists and caricaturists seized upon these rumors of cowardly escape and created wildly inventive images, some using photomontage, to sensationalize the political story by emasculating the fallen leader of the Confederacy. A popular song was “Jeff in Petticoats!” Photographers circulated and even pirated dozens of fanciful photographic cards. Many used a photographic portrait of Davis on a hand-drawn body in a woman’s dress, hat,  and crinoline, but wearing his own boots, the detail that which supposedly betrayed him to his captors. This extraordinary example of the use of photography in early propaganda imagery is amplified in the Jefferson Davis Archive, a unique collection of over ninety works on the theme, including Civil War-era photographs, lithographs, newspapers, and illustrated sheet music, that was recently donated to ICP by its compiler, collector Charles Schwartz, with support from the ICP Acquisitions Committee.

Andrew Savulich, Woman laughing after car wreck, 1989

Andrew Savulich, Taxi driver explaining how an argument with his passenger caused him to drive into a restaurant, 1989

Andrew Savulich, Police give neighbors cat and hamster found inside apartment containing a double homicide, 1993

Weegee, Allan Downs–Killed His Wife, September 8, 1942

Weegee, Simply Add Boiling Water, December 9, 1943

Usually—when tragedy strikes—feelings of grief, empathy, aggravation, and denial can overwhelm the human psyche. In such instances, it seems impossible to look beyond a physical tragedy in order to make light of a situation. Indeed, self-taught photojournalist Andrew Savulich (American, b. 1949) proves that the two can coexist in some state of harmony.

During his freelance years, from 1977 to 1993, Savulich roamed the streets of New York following breaking news reports and documenting the subsequent events as they transpired. While not altogether unique in his approach, which parallels earlier works by Weegee (American, born Austria, 1899–1968), there is a humorous brevity to the captions found on Savulich’s photographs—one that almost mimics the drama of newspaper headline. It is here, in these captions, that the audience is relieved of their grievances and given a momentary glimpse of light (a feat which is never fully, and almost unintentionally, captured by Weegee).

Cairo, Egypt. Dec 27th, 1898, Tuesday.
Hotel Bristol
p. 1. I have just paid sixty cents for this book with the wonder if the notes will be worth as much. I also bought a Baedeker on Egypt [the entire 1902 Baedeker, with maps, illustrations, etc., can be seen here!]. The size and contents seem almost discouraging when I think of trying to master the subject. It has been my custom when I’m visiting a country to do as thoroughly as possible in history, customs, geographical location, physical conditions, also to take especial notice of the little details that one so seldom finds in books…

p. 73. The water carrier and street sprinkler of Egypt. In Palestine he lets people drink from this when asked. When the hair is left on the skin, it gives the appearance of a perspiring animal. It is hard work to walk down into the Nile and fill this skin with a leather bucket then walk up the hill and sprinkle the street or climb up to the top of a sprinkler wagon and empty the contents into the wagon.

p. 75. Men going down the rapids as we saw them. The one on the right carries his one small garment about in size to the Madam Nubile which he afterwards puts on and immediately comes for baksheesh.

p. 83. If these women were only clean! I know of no human picture of movement so graceful as that of the women of an evening carrying jugs of water. Bethlehem women are the most graceful in their carriage of any I’ve seen in the world. I attribute it to their carrying these large jugs of water on their head, having begun with small ones when children. Never have I seen men carrying, and for some reason to their credit, neither have I seen women bending their backs in working…

p. 85. “Before him, wand in hand, bare legged, eager eyed, in Greek skull cap and gorgeous gold embroidered waistcoat and fluttering white tunic flies a native Sais, or running footman. No person of position drives in Cairo without one or two of these attendants. The Sais (strong light and beautiful, like John of Bologna’s Mercury) are said to die young. The pace kills them. ” Miss Edwards. It is one of the prettiest sights in Cairo and Alexandria as well, especially if their are two of them for their wands are light and they are usually good looking and graceful. In former times they were necessary, now it is the style.

p. 95. This is the way boys are carried, clothed only when the cold is severe. The girls don’t count. Girls and women don’t pray, as many believe they have no souls. Some of the women who do believe in a future life believe it is to be spent in a fine harem.
Since writing the above and told that the girls also are carried in this position as well as the boys. I have never seen many children so large as represented in the picture but smaller ones nearly every time I’m out. Babies not over two months old are carried in this manner. They hold on by clutching the mother’s hair.

p. 97. Wednesday Jan. 25. This is the day Dr. Beiler left for Greece. In the afternoon I drove with Miss Caruthers to see the Sphinx and Pyramids by moonlight. We took tea at the Mena House. I hurried through it as the sun was almost set. Walking up rapidly I was just in time to see the last shadows that seemed so painted and sharply outlined on the bright green fields and almost reaching to the banks of the Nile that are five or six miles away. Then I walked around until I got rid of the men who were insisting I ride their camels, for I was beset by one and another who as soon as I stopped for a view of the Sphinx would thrust their camels between and almost against me. I tired them out and their tiresome harsh voices ceased and melted away in the green fields below. Then I had a view all alone in peace and quiet, and evening light that I will not soon forget. Older than the Pyramids this monster Sphinx is the form of a huge watch dog is crouched down as if ready to spring. There is rigor and life in every line mutilated as it is the body by age and face not only by age but by being made a target of by the Turks…

p. 125 …I’ve written these notes after many a hard days work and when I should have been sleeping, and on off days with countless interruptions. I wonder how I’ve done it and in so short a time. I thought I’d leave Egypt with no regret for there is so much that is especially trying with these peculiar people, yet it is a most interesting study, and if I cannot continue it on the spot, my eyes were opened so that I should do so intelligently in their lands. I have wasted no time since landing Dec. 26, 1898. Have become attached to this book and while perhaps of little interest to others is of great value to me. Now I wish Aunt Alexia was alive. I believe she would enjoy it and… what this is but a skeleton of.
Feb. 2 Lovely Sunshine, smooth sea. On board ready to start. Farewell to the land of antiquity, sunshine, mummies, and baksheesh.

Clara E. Whitcomb, [Clara E. Whitcomb's Journal of her Travels through Egypt], December 27, 1898-February 2, 1899