The Past Comes Alive: History in High-Definition

5 minute read

There’s always something interesting about history—it’s often just a matter of knowing where to find it.

That’s the idea behind Shorpy.com, an eye-popping collection of historical imagery that casts a modern light on an astonishing array of photographs long-hidden in the Library of Congress archives. Named after a 12-year-old coal miner in a picture by the great Lewis Hine, Shorpy.com offers new, high-definition life to old images, restoring the often-breathtaking detail found in the original negatives: the uneven, rutted cobbles on a 1908 Philadelphia street, or the slight hint of alarm in the eye of a test pilot about to fly an aircraft in 1911.

In the last decade, the Library began digitizing specific sets of images in their 13-million-photo strong collection. Soon after, Dave Hall, the co-founder of Shorpy.com, began exploring their archives. Previously a Style editor at the Washington Post, Hall wasn’t especially interested in historical images until late one night, when he discovered several photographs of early 20th-century child laborers. Taken by Lewis Hine on an 8×10 view camera, Hall was amazed at the pictures’ clarity — sparkling with far more detail than a standard 35mm frame. Wondering why he had never before seen such strikingly detailed historical imagery, Hall took it upon himself to post the photos online, in high-resolution — an endeavor simplified by the LOC’s public-domain image rights.

That was in 2007. Now, six years later, Hall has worked his magic on more than 10,000 historic photographs, ranging from early tintypes of Native Americans to medium-format color slides of 1950’s suburbia. Hall mostly sources the site’s new images from the LOC’s raw high-resolution scans, then restores them to their original grandeur.

The physical reality of turn-of-the-century America — its machines, factories, tenements and faces — emerge as if unearthed from a time capsule. Quirky cultural artifacts that have always been with us — locked in photosensitive chemicals in the glass plates and nitrate negatives of the LOC’s Prints & Photographs Division — feel as new and, in many cases, as unexpected, as they were on the day they were shot.

But the primary value of Shorpy.com isn’t just found in the hundreds upon hundreds of restored images of Americana, trains, bathing contests, accidents, war ephemera, portraits of royalty, and the occasional sharecropper. It’s in the details that Hall has meticulously restored within each photograph that the true power of these pictures is found. Every image republished on Shorpy has been color corrected, toned, and sharpened — restoring the brilliant texture and jaw-dropping sharpness found in the original negatives and glass plates. These negatives have a tremendous amount of detail, Hall explains, but the Library of Congress’ scans often don’t reflect this. The details exist in the original negatives, but are frequently hidden in blown-out highlights and muddied shadows. So, with each image, Hall balances the exposure, correcting for the wear of time upon negatives that record a narrow but deep slice of American history.

Hall doesn’t modify the content of the images, either — all of his adjustments are carefully limited to the standards of which the original photographers would likely pursue. He is, in effect, a master digital restorer, working as a darkroom printer of the time period would have done while preparing the images for public exhibition.

Most — if not all — of these pictures have never before been displayed with such clarity, and certainly have never been enjoyed, by an audience as vast as the web. This is where Shorpy’s strength as a historical and cultural tool comes into its own. Images that were once considered only as objects of history are made immediate and relevant once again, in part because we’re able to see that life in the past isn’t quite as different from our world as we perhaps imagined it to be. Shorpy lets us see in detail the faces of the past — and they look, in essence, exactly like the faces we’d see today on any American street.

Perhaps even more amazing than the photos themselves, however, are the comments on the site, often made anonymously, that help to flesh out the huge story behind the photos — and, in a sense, behind the Library of Congress itself. Users of the site closely inspect the images, pointing out a range of details — everything from specific styles of clothing to the facial expressions of passersby reflected in store windows.

For history to be relevant, it has to not only be accessible, but detailed enough that it feels alive. By embracing the immeasurable value of America’s vast, public photo library, Shorpy has found an elegant way to engage a generation for whom, and on whom, the power and personality of history is often lost.


Vaughn Wallace is the producer of LightBox. Follow him on Twitter @vaughnwallace.


We recommend viewing these images in full-screen mode. November 1942. Columbia Steel at Geneva, Utah. Servicing one of the floodlights that turn night into day on the construction site of a new steel plant needed for the war effort. 4x5 Kodachrome transparency by Andreas Feininger
Philadelphia circa 1908. "Delaware Avenue, foot of Market Street." 8x10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company
October 1942. Thousands of North American Aviation employees at Inglewood, California, look skyward as the bomber and fighter planes they helped build perform overhead during a lunch period air show. This plant produces the battle-tested B-25 'Billy Mitchell' bomber, used in General Doolittle's raid on Tokyo, and the P-51 'Mustang' fighter plane, which was first brought into prominence by the British raid on Dieppe.4x5 Kodachrome transparency by Alfred Palmer for the Office of War Information
Washington, D.C., circa 1911. "Flights and test of Rex Smith biplane flown by Antony Jannus. The plane with Rufus R. Bermann, wireless operator, and Fred Aubert." Harris & Ewing Collection glass negative
October 1909. Boston. "Truant hanging around boats in the harbor during school hours." Lewis Wickes Hine
Tank driver, Fort Knox. June 1942. 4x5 Kodachrome transparency by Alfred Palmer for the Office of War Information
June 1937. "Old Negro. He hoes, picks cotton and is full of good humor. Aldridge Plantation, Mississippi."Dorothea Lange
October 1942. A painter cleans the tail section of a P-51 Mustang fighter prior to spraying it with olive-drab camouflage. North American Aviation plant, Inglewood, Calif. 4x5 Kodachrome transparency by Alfred Palmer
On the Atlantic circa 1905. "An afternoon on the beach."8x10 inch glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company
October 1941. "Grand Central Terminal, New York City."Medium format negative by John Collier—FSA/Office of War Information archive
July 3, 1913. "Fun at camp." Boy Scouts in Gettysburg, Penn.5x7 glass negative, George Grantham Bain Collection
Aboard the U.S.S. Oregon circa 1897. "Waiting for the gong."8x10 inch dry plate glass negative by Edward H. Hart, Detroit Publishing Company
Circa 1905, in the American South. "A Southern chain gang."8x10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company.
Circa 1905. "The close of a career in New York."8x10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company
July 1942. Servicing an A-20 bomber at Langley Field, Va. 4x5 Kodachrome transparency by Alfred Palmer
Weslaco, Texas. The "musical Drake family," performing at a barn dance in the Farm Security Administration's Mercer G. Evans camp, February 1942. The fiddler is Nathan Drake, the younger boy is Jasper "Sleepy" Drake, and behind him is brother Weldon Drake. Medium-format safety negative by Arthur Rothstein for the Farm Security Administration
December 1, 1923. Washington, D.C. "Marine-Army game, Griffith Stadium." Marines carried the day 7-0.National Photo glass negative
June 1942. "This husky member of a construction crew building a 33,000 volt power line into Fort Knox is performing an important war service. Thousands of soldiers are in training there, and the new line from a hydroelectric plant at Louisville is needed to supplement the existing power supply."4x5 Kodachrome transparency by Alfred Palmer, Office of War Information.
March 1943. Engineers' color guard at Fort Belvoir, Virginia.4x5 Kodachrome transparency, photographer unknown.
Three views of Lewis Payne (a.k.a. Lewis Powell) in April 1865, three months before his execution by hanging, wearing the same sweater.Photographs (wet collodion, glass plate) by Alexander Gardner
July 7, 1865. "Washington, D.C. Hanging hooded bodies of the four conspirators; crowd departing." Lincoln assassination conspirators Mary Surratt, Lewis Payne, David Herold and George Atzerodt shortly after their execution at Fort McNair.Wet plate glass negative by Alexander Gardner
Chicago, April 1943. "Mike Evans, a welder, at the rip tracks of the Proviso Yard, Chicago & North Western R.R."4x5 Kodachrome transparency by Jack Delano for the Office of War Information
Circa 1861-1865. "Unknown location. Embalming surgeon at work on soldier's body. From photographs of artillery, place and date unknown."Wet plate glass negative, photographer unknown. Library of Congress
March 18, 1922. "Members of the Ku-Klux-Klan about to take off with the literature which was scattered over the suburbs of the city." The date coincides with a Klan parade through Washington's Virginia suburbs. Library of Congress
December 1942. A winter afternoon in the North Proviso yardmaster's office, Chicago & North Western Railroad.4x5 Kodachrome transparency by Jack Delano
1943. Japanese-American internees at the Manzanar War Relocation Center in California. "Players involved in a football game on a dusty field, buildings and mountains in the distance."Medium-format nitrate negative by Ansel Adams
August 21, 1922. "Citizens' Military Training Camp, Camp Meade" (Fort Meade, Md.)National Photo Co.
February 1937. Gee's Bend, Alabama. Descendants of former slaves of the Pettway Plantation. They are still living under primitive conditions there. Meat in sacks hangs from tree limbs to be cured.Medium format nitrate negative by Arthur Rothstein for the Farm Security Administration
April 21, 1927. "Do ducks swim? Misses Eugenia Dunbar and Mary Moose." The main focus here is of course the horse trough, once a common item of street furniture in many big cities.National Photo glass negative
July 1939. Gordonton, North Carolina. "Country store on dirt road. Sunday afternoon. Note kerosene pump on the right and the gasoline pump on the left. Rough, unfinished timber posts have been used as supports for porch roof. Negro men sitting on the porch. Brother of store owner stands in doorway."4x5 nitrate negative by Dorothea Lange for the Farm Security Administration
New York circa 1908. Making a plaster death mask.8x10 glass negative, George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress
Pat Crowe, "former outlaw," in 1921. According to newspaper accounts of the day, Mr. Crowe's résumé included bank holdups, train robbery and kidnapping. National Photo Company Collection glass negative
March 1936. "Heavy black clouds of dust rising over the Texas Panhandle."35mm negative by Arthur Rothstein
May 1943. "Mexican workers recruited and brought to the Arkansas valley, Colorado, Nebraska and Minnesota by the FSA to harvest sugar beets."Office of War Information
11 a.m. Monday, May 9, 1910. "Newsies at Skeeter’s Branch, Jefferson near Franklin, St. Louis."Photo by Lewis Wickes Hine
Saratoga Springs, New York, circa 1915. "Broadway at the United States Hotel." Looking more than a little like one of those idealized Disney "Main Streets."5x7 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company
August 1936. "Tour of drought area. President Roosevelt speaking from train at Bismarck, North Dakota."Medium format nitrate negative by Arthur Rothstein for the Resettlement Administration
Santa Fe R.R. yard at night, Kansas City, Kansas. March 1943. 4x5 Kodachrome transparency by Jack Delano.

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