Skip to content

Found: Photographs from the National Geographic Archive

If you’re not following the National Geographic‘s Tumblr Found, you really should be — it’s terrific. More than a few of the photographs, especially those of 1950’s and 60’s America, have a quietly Ballardian, drinking at the edge-of-darkness, Cold War chill:


Sightseers park to watch a Stratocruiser taxi across an underpass in Queens, New York, March 1951.
PHOTOGRAPH BY B. ANTHONY STEWART, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC


The glow of an atomic bomb test draws Las Vegas casino workers, March 1953.
PHOTOGRAPH BY VOLKMAR K. WENZTEL, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC


People on steep slope overlook western headland of Martha’s Vineyard, August 1950.
PHOTOGRAPH BY ROBERT SISSON, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC


A couple inspects a beach house destroyed after a storm in March 1962.
PHOTOGRAPH BY B. ANTHONY STEWART, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC


Fifty-two stories high, city noises fade and vistas expand. Chicago, June 1967.
PHOTOGRAPH BY JAMES L. STANFIELD, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

One Comment

  1. “More than a few of the photographs, especially those of 1950′s and 60′s America, have a quietly Ballardian, drinking at the edge-of-darkness, Cold War chill”

    Yep. I bought some old issues of the magazine a long time ago precisely because they had that quality. One issue’s cover story was “Helicopters Over Vietnam”. It was written in the early sixties, probably during the Johnson administration. The cover shot was of a village with fires burning in it; the fires weren’t for cooking.

Comments are closed.