Coal miner’s wife and three of their children. Company house in Pursglove, Scotts Run, West Virginia, September 1938
The company house squatted there in Pursglove, a gray testament to the miner’s borrowed existence. Four souls dwelled within its weathered walls – a miner’s wife and three young’uns, their faces etched with the coal dust that seeped into every crease of Scotts Run. September’s wan light did little to soften the hard edges of their lives.
The woman’s eyes, deep-set and weary, held the weight of a thousand descents into darkness, though she herself had never set foot in the mines. Her children played in the shadow of the tipple, their laughter a defiant song against the constant rumble of coal cars and the distant cough of men coming up from the earth.
They were of the land, yet the land was not theirs – their lives mortgaged to the company store, their futures stamped with the indelible mark of coal. In Pursglove, in all of West Virginia, the seams of coal ran deeper than blood, binding families to the earth with chains of debt and duty.
Norma Jeane in 1945, before she became the famous Marilyn Monroe
Bride and groom in traditional attire. Delsbo, Sweden ca 1890’s
Model and writer Alice Denham at her desk in 1962
Teenagers’ marriage criteria from Progressive Farmer October 1955
A French woman with her baguette and six bottles of wine, Paris, 1945.
A housewife poses with a week’s worth of groceries in 1947. She spent $12.50 a week to buy all her groceries except milk. On this she managed to feed herself, her husband, her four-year-old twins and the family cat.
Graduating class, 1936
Man with Down’s syndrome, 1890s
Life for a man with Down’s syndrome in the 1890s was often one of isolation and misunderstanding. Known then by the unfortunate term “mongoloid idiot,” such individuals were frequently hidden away from society, their potential unrealized and their humanity largely ignored.
Medical knowledge of the condition was in its infancy, with John Langdon Down having described it mere decades earlier. Most afflicted with this chromosomal disorder faced severely limited prospects, often institutionalized or, if fortunate, cared for by family members behind closed doors.
Yet, even in this era of ignorance, there were rare instances of individuals who defied the grim prognosis society had assigned them. Some displayed unexpected talents – in music, art, or handicrafts – that occasionally allowed them to connect with the world in meaningful ways.
These sparks of ability, these glimpses of the rich inner lives behind the distinctive facial features and intellectual challenges, served as a poignant reminder of the complexity of the human mind and the folly of hasty judgments based on appearance or disability.
Guide to dress codes, from most formal, to least formal (1920’s).
A Geisha after washing her hair and before styling it, c. 1905.
This private moment, rarely glimpsed by outsiders, holds a quiet power. Her face, usually a carefully crafted mask of white powder and red lips, is bare, vulnerable.
The rigorous styling that will transform her into the visual embodiment of artistic tradition has not yet begun. Her hair, normally sculpted into elaborate styles that can take hours to perfect, now falls naturally, free from the weight of wax and ornaments. This interlude between washing and styling is a breath, a pause in the demanding life of a geisha.
It’s a time when she might reflect on the previous night’s banquet, mentally prepare for the day ahead, or simply savor a moment of solitude.
The scent of camellia oil lingers in the air, a reminder of the meticulous care her hair requires.
Soon, her attendant will arrive to begin the transformation, but for now, she is simply herself – not yet the “flower and willow world” personified, but a woman on the cusp of assuming her art.
An Inuit who warms his wife’s feet. 1880-1890s
At the dawn of the twentieth century, as the color line stands stark and unyielding, there exist families that defy the artificial boundaries of race. These biracial unions, born of love that dares transcend societal dictates, bear witness to the fundamental fallacy of racial division.
A white mother cradles her brown-skinned babe, her touch a rebellion against the very fabric of a segregated nation. The father, a son of Africa, stands proud yet wary, knowing his children must navigate a world that will question their very existence.
These families live in the interstices of our rigidly defined society, embodying both the promise of a united future and the perilous reality of our present.
Their homes are crucibles where the arbitrary nature of racial categorization is laid bare, where the lie of racial purity crumbles in the face of humanity’s rich complexity.
Yet, even as these families represent hope, they also bear a terrible burden.
Their children, blessed with a dual heritage, are also cursed to wander between worlds, never fully embraced by either. In their eyes, we see reflected the soul of America itself – divided, conflicted, yet yearning for a harmony that transcends the artificial barriers we have erected between our brothers and sisters.
During the “Ugly Laws” era 1920s
The “Ugly Laws,” enacted in several American cities in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, were a blatant and cruel manifestation of society’s discomfort with visible disability and physical difference.
These ordinances made it illegal for people with perceived “unsightly” or “deformed” appearances to appear in public spaces, cloaking discrimination under the guise of protecting the public from discomfort.
The laws did not just marginalize those with physical disabilities; they reflected a broader cultural obsession with purity, order, and eugenic ideals.
By criminalizing the presence of disabled and disfigured individuals, the state reinforced the idea that only certain bodies—those conforming to ableist and aesthetic norms—were worthy of public existence.
This legalized exclusion was a direct affront to human dignity, stripping individuals of the right to exist in shared spaces without fear of persecution.
The legacy of these laws lingers, reminding us how deeply prejudice against disability was embedded into the fabric of public policy, often masked as concern for societal welfare.
A married couple on the Nebraska prairie, 1800s. Though ramshackle and leaning a little, their house has homey touches, including a decorative wreath and some pet songbirds in a cage.
The house stood alone on the vast Nebraska prairie, leaning slightly as if it had weathered too many winds, too many winters. Yet, despite its rough edges and sagging roof, there was a quiet dignity to it.
A wreath hung proudly on the door, its faded colors a reminder that even in the starkest places, beauty could find a home.
The couple who lived there, hardened by the land but not defeated by it, had made this place their own. Inside, pet songbirds chirped softly in a small cage, their delicate notes drifting out into the prairie, where only the grass and the sky listened. It was these small touches—the birds, the wreath—that spoke of hope, of perseverance, of a life carved from the earth but softened by love.
In their home, one could see not just survival, but a stubborn insistence on finding joy amid the hardships, a quiet determination to make something beautiful out of the wild.
A spinner at the cotton mill, circa 1910. She didn’t know her age, and made less than half a dollar a day.
She stood at the spinning frame, small and slight, dwarfed by the towering machinery that clattered and whirred around her. Her hands, roughened from long hours of work, moved with a practiced efficiency, but there was a weariness in her eyes that belied her youth.
She didn’t know her age—no one had ever bothered to tell her—but she couldn’t have been more than 10, maybe 12. For less than half a dollar a day, she labored in the dim, dusty air of the cotton mill, trading her childhood for survival.
The factory floor was no place for a child, yet here she was, one of many, invisible to most but essential to the profits of those who never saw her face.
How many years would be stolen from her, how much longer would she endure before the relentless wheels of industry wore her down completely?
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