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You can now download nearly 70,000 hi-res early 20th century color photos from a French museum

Old photos can reveal a lot about the past, and I’m always excited to take a peek at the world that existed long before I was born. The Albert Kahn Museum in France has just made it easier: it has made nearly 70,000 hi-res, color photos available to the public.

The images are, in my opinion, truly remarkable and interesting. They show people, buildings, and events from the early 20th century captured all over the world, giving us an insight into many different cultures. They’re all in public domain, so the museum made them completely free to download and use.

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The first three licensed woman doctors shown in a single photo

I enjoy learning about people who made history and paved the way for the generations after them. This photo shows three of these women captured together way back in the late 19th century. These are the first three licensed women doctors from their respective countries who obtained a degree in Western medicine.

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Who should own photos of slaves?

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In 1976 while rummaging through an attic of Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology in search of old museum publications, editorial assistant Lorna Condon opened a drawer in a wooden cabinet. Inside, she found a number of flat leather cases which contained a series of daguerreotypes of partially and fully nude Black people. Names were handwritten on paper labels identifying 7 individuals: Alfred, Delia, Drama, Fassena, Jack, Jem, and Renty with assumed ethnicities and occupations. The daguerreotypes represented some of the earliest known images of slaves in the U.S.

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Was this iconic war photo staged?

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There are some iconic photos taken through history that turned out to be staged or altered. The example that first comes to mind for me is Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother, which was both.

In this video, Vox brings another example of a historic image that was most likely staged. It’s Roger Fenton’s Valley of the Shadow of Death taken in 1855 during the Crimean War. Two versions of the image caused a lot of questions and controversy, and film director Errol Morris was determined to figure it out.

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What’s in a photograph? – Time machines and legacies

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I don’t remember the first time I became aware of my family photo album, but from a very young age I always found looking at those photos a time absorbing, and totally enthralling pastime. I would sit for long periods of time staring at those familiar faces, and all those captured moments of times gone by, and lose myself in a world of wonder.

‘’Mum, who’s this little girl here?’’, ‘’Who’s that army man?’’, ‘’Where’s this?’’ I would ask, pointing at faded black and white images displayed proudly in the behemoth album that sat on my lap, squashing me into the armchair.

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The Smithsonian puts almost 3 million high-res images online, free for everyone to download and use

The Smithsonian Institution has released an online gallery of 2.8 million images with more to come. The massive collection includes images and data from across the Smithsonian’s 19 museums, along with nine research centers, libraries, archives, and the National Zoo. And the best of all is: all photos are copyright-free and available for you to download and use.

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Library of Congress and 12 other institutions release over 1,600 images for public use

Most of us know Unsplash as a home of free stock photos (and an endless source of discussion about whether or not we should share our images for free). But today, there’s a good news story coming from the company. Thanks to its latest partnership, Unsplash is now offering a selection of historical photos free for everyone to download and use.

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Paris Musées makes over 62,000 of historic photos copyright free and available online

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If you enjoy historic photos and need them for any purpose, here’s a real gem. Paris Musées has just launched an online collection with more than 100,000 digital reproductions of classic artwork. Among them, there are 62,500 photos, all of them scanned in high-resolution and publicly accessible under a CC0 license.

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