• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Amazing historical photos and paintings

Status
Not open for further replies.
I came across this photo earlier tonight, and it was too cool not to share. If you have any cool historical photos from any point in history, feel free to share it and the story behind it. Paintings are cool too, if only cause photos would limit us about a hundred and fifty years. Also, share why you like that piece, or why you find it interesting.

To start us off:

nayenezgani-navaho-a3eum7.jpg


Navajo man dressed up as nayenezgani spirit. The nayenezgani spirit is a “slayer of alien gods.” The Navajo believe that this spirit casts out the evil spirits of the world.

http://www.answers.com/topic/nayenezgani

I love this photo cause it gives off such a creepy and alien vibe.

Edit: The original link stopped showing for me, so I put it in again.
 

TAJ

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
That this was ever legal in California is mindblowing. That it made conservatives instantly give up their most precious rights is hilarious.


http://postimage.org/

Black Panthers demonstrating in front of the California state capitol.
 

Valhelm

contribute something
I've always loved that picture. It would be perfect for an EP cover.

Benjamin Constant's "Mehmet Entering Constantinople" is just amazing.

Benjamin-Constant-The_Entry_of_Mahomet_II_into_Constantinople-1876.jpg


It's both tragic and glorious, as the Ottoman army brings light into the city, stepping over the dozens of corpses they left. The Roman architecture is long-eroded, showing the decline of the Eastern Empire. The Christian mural is also shrouded in darkness.

I believe that Zonaro's 20th century remake is more historically accurate and less orientalist, but much less impactful.

Police Verso, painted a few years earlier, essentially defined modern gladiator tropes.

Jean-Leon_Gerome_Pollice_Verso.jpg


It's a very striking painting with a great use of light and metal texture.
 
I came across this photo earlier tonight, and it was too cool not to share. If you have any cool historical photos from any point in history, feel free to share it and the story behind it. Paintings are cool too, if only cause photos would limit us about a hundred and fifty years. Also, share why you like that piece, or why you find it interesting.

To start us off:

nayenezgani-navaho-a3eum7.jpg




I love this photo cause it gives off such a creepy and alien vibe.

Edit: The original link stopped showing for me, so I put it in again.
You took a screenshot of Skull Kid from Twilight Princess and are seeing if you can pass it off as a photograph, aren't you?
 
You took a screenshot of Skull Kid from Teilight Princess and are seeing if you can pass it off as a photograph, aren't you?

Heh.

Trying to find out more on the original, I came across this one too:

Indian War Gods

indian-war-godsv7liy.jpg


Here for your consideration is an old picture of Yebichai, Indian War Gods. It was created in 1904 by Edward S. Curtis.

The photograph presents Three Indians: Tonenili, Tobadzischini, and Nayenezgani, in ceremonial dress, photographed against dark rock background.

Edit: Thanks for the link, East Lake. Amazing photos.
 
I've always loved that picture. It would be perfect for an EP cover.

Benjamin Constant's "Mehmet Entering Constantinople" is just amazing.

Benjamin-Constant-The_Entry_of_Mahomet_II_into_Constantinople-1876.jpg


It's both tragic and glorious, as the Ottoman army brings light into the city, stepping over the dozens of corpses they left. The Roman architecture is long-eroded, showing the decline of the Eastern Empire. The Christian mural is also shrouded in darkness.

While the Gladiator one is amazing, this just really is so striking.
 

J.M.W. Turner was inspired to paint The Slave Ship in 1840 after reading The History and Abolition of the Slave Trade[2] by Thomas Clarkson. In 1781, the captain of the slave ship Zong had ordered 133 slaves to be thrown overboard so that insurance payments could be collected. This event probably inspired Turner to create his landscape and to choose to coincide its exhibition with a meeting of the British Anti-Slavery Society.

Ugly history, beautiful painting. Found it interesting because I had no idea such a thing happened in the past until I had seen a detail of the painting in one of my art classes.

And totally subbed.
 
One of my favorite subreddits is r/HistoryPorn, you can find some really amazing gems in there, and some of the colorized photos are damn impressive. This is one of my favorites, the backside of the Hoover Dam before it was filled with water.

EiuJ0nz.jpg
 

Jtrizzy

Member
Jacques-Louis David The Coronation of Napoleon. This is a great hi res version. You can really zoom in and see some amazing facial expressions.

Jacques-Louis_David_The_Coronation_of_Napoleon_edit.jpg
 
The photos of the Hindenburg crashing has always struck me as incredibly arresting.

The amazing thing? If you were on the Hindenberg, you had a better than 2/3rds shot at living. Only 13 of 36 passengers and 22 of 61 crewman died.

I don't even know how that happened.

Oh, and one dude on the ground also died when the thing landed on him. Poor guy. Unless he was a nazi, then fuck 'em.
 

TAJ

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
The photos of the Hindenburg crashing has always struck me as incredibly arresting.

There was a guy who had a movie camera rolling onboard while it went down. His son used to work at ILM and they used the footage as reference for The Rocketeer.
 

sphagnum

Banned
I find the Paris Psalter fascinating. I guess this is bending the rules since it's about historical artwork and not artwork about history per se (although from the Byzantine perspective it was definitely about history), but I think Byzantine art was highly underrated. The strikingly classical aesthetics, the bright colors, everything about it stands out so compellingly from other materials created at the same time in Europe (10th century AD).

cQNA7Ko.jpg

xGLwVa9.jpg

k8hBmtT.jpg

TL5g7Ff.jpg

1OlLwWQ.jpg

VRwyhET.jpg

cKd1oaK.jpg

gBqrwWd.png

khLoeQa.jpg
 
The amazing thing? If you were on the Hindenberg, you had a better than 2/3rds shot at living. Only 13 of 36 passengers and 22 of 61 crewman died.

I don't even know how that happened.

Indeed, you look at the photos and the footage from the newsreels and it's amazing that more people survived than were killed.

There was a guy who had a movie camera rolling onboard while it went down. His son used to work at ILM and they used the footage as reference for The Rocketeer.

Hey I loved that movie as a kid, cool factoid!
 

Fuchsdh

Member
makes me wonder what other interesting shit is out there on universities websites

A whole lot. It's amazing what you can stumble across, especially on old faculty webpages. The downside of not doing SEO is this stuff is hard to find.

Great pics, everyone.

Here's some to chew on: color photography circa the turn of the last century, done by combining different photos. By the Russian Gorskii. Wikipedia has a ton of his images.

There's also some good examples here: http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/08/russia_in_color_a_century_ago.html
 

NekoFever

Member
I love looking at Frank Browne's photos from the Titanic. He was a priest sailing from Southampton to get off in Cobh, Ireland, before the ship went on to New York. He befriended an American couple who offered him a ticket for the whole journey, but when he asked permission to cross to New York, he was ordered to get off in Ireland.

Because he did so, he not only survived but also brought with him some of the only photos of daily life on the ship.

His last photo of the ship is particularly haunting as it leaves Cobh, bound for New York:

Fr%20Bownes%20Last%20Picture%20of%20Titanic.jpg
 
Boston 154 years ago, photo taken from a balloon.

awesome_photos_collected_from_history_10.jpg


Castro and Lincoln.

awesome_photos_collected_from_history_03.jpg


Dogfights over London.

awesome_photos_collected_from_history_07.jpg


Osama Bin Laden, second from the right.

awesome_photos_collected_from_history_16.jpg
 

kruis

Exposing the sinister cartel of retailers who allow companies to pay for advertising space.
Fayum mummy paintings

Mummy portraits or Fayum mummy portraits (also Faiyum mummy portraits) is the modern term given to a type of naturalistic painted portraits on wooden boards attached to mummies from the Coptic period. They belong to the tradition of panel painting, one of the most highly regarded forms of art in the Classical world. In fact, the Fayum portraits are the only large body of art from that tradition to have survived.

Mummy portraits have been found across Egypt, but are most common in the Faiyum Basin, particularly from Hawara and Antinoopolis, hence the common name. "Faiyum Portraits" is generally thought of as a stylistic, rather than a geographic, description. While painted Cartonnage mummy cases date back to pharaonic times, the Faiyum mummy portraits were an innovation dating to the Coptic period on time of the Roman occupation of Egypt.

I'm amazed by how lifelike and well made those portraits were compared to the highly stylized Egyptian art we're used to.

 

Pickman

Member
216px-Elephantmary.jpg


Mary the Elephant was part of a traveling circus. Her handler was untrained and abusive, and when he stabbed her with a hook behind the ear for eating a bit of fruit, she grabbed him by the neck, picked him up in the air, and slammed him to the ground before trampling him.

The local townsfolk formed a mob to kill the elephant, and despite shooting it 5 times they were unable to cause much harm. Instead she was loaded onto a train, taken a few miles down the line to an industrial train yard, and hung by the neck with a chain until dead.

They lynched an elephant in 1916.
 

Amir0x

Banned
murdervictimhaui2.jpg


This is the last photo taken by a serial killer right before he killed this girl. He had before this cut her hair and forced her to wear this black dress. :(
 
Mary the Elephant was part of a traveling circus. Her handler was untrained and abusive, and when he stabbed her with a hook behind the ear for eating a bit of fruit, she grabbed him by the neck, picked him up in the air, and slammed him to the ground before trampling him.

The local townsfolk formed a mob to kill the elephant, and despite shooting it 5 times they were unable to cause much harm. Instead she was loaded onto a train, taken a few miles down the line to an industrial train yard, and hung by the neck with a chain until dead.

They lynched an elephant in 1916.

Now I'm sad (and angry).
 

Gustav

Banned
murdervictimhaui2.jpg


This is the last photo taken by a serial killer right before he killed this girl. He had before this cut her hair and forced her to wear this black dress. :(

That IS definitely not amazing. Some goes for the elephant. You guys need a fucked up pictures thread.
 

StayDead

Member
That's just Mexico City and TBH it's a "paradero" or "Bus Stop" Back in 1890 the place was beautiful with steam boats operating from that place to Chalco almost 50km away. Here's another good one. Paseo de la reforma 1900

I love the angle of the second picture. It makes it look like Sim City 2000 o_o
 

Pickman

Member
In regards to the evolution of a city and the urban sprawl, here's Shanghai in 1990 and then 2010. 20 years of development.

500x_shangai-before-and-after.jpg
 
ap97.341.jpg


My personal favorite that made me really just love going to art museams. On the internet you look at it and its meh... But in real life this painting is huge and you can just feel the weight and power of this image.

Obviously it's very cliche and popular, but it really made me appreciate art
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom