April 1865. Petersburg, Virginia. “Federal Army camp. Soldiers boxing.” Wet plate glass negative. Civil War Collection, Library of Congress.
Circa 1906. “Coaling a river packet underway on the Mississippi near Memphis.” 8×10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company.
August 1908. “Noon hour in an Indianapolis tomato cannery. Young fellows in front of boxcar.” Photograph by Lewis Wickes Hine.
The Bureau of War Risk Insurance, a World War I agency that over the past century morphed into the Department of Veterans Affairs, which still occupies this building. Plus ça change …
Washington, D.C., 1923. “War Risk Bureau, Vermont Avenue and I Street N.W.” 8×10 inch glass negative, National Photo Company Collection.
May 1942. “Twenty-four hours a day the sparks from acetylene torches of steel workers in eight Denver fabricating plants are flying thick and fast that the U.S. Navy may carry the battle to the enemy in all parts of the world. Here in secluded Denver, the world’s largest city not on a navigable waterway, this war production worker, who has never seen a battleship or an ocean, fashions the steel hull parts which are being assembled at Mare Island Navy Yard in California — 1,200 miles from where he and his fellow workers are on the job to help ‘keep ’em sailing’.” Office of War Information, photographer unknown.
November 1942. “Loading copper ore at the open-pit mining operations of Utah Copper Company at Bingham Canyon.” Medium format nitrate negative by Andreas Feininger for the Office of War Information.
June 1943. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. “Miss Natalie O’Donald, service-station attendant at the Atlantic Refining Company garages.” Medium-format negative by Jack Delano for the Office of War Information.
