New Jetpack Site

3 years in the life of a shadowy Dutch artist in a cloak and hat. The revealing 1800s visual diaries of Christiaan Andriessen. The Amsterdam Drawing Academy wouldn’t let him draw female nudes so he left to set up a studio at home.

Between 1805 and 1808, the Amsterdam artist Christiaan Andriessen kept a diary;...

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Art & Design History

Only 35 photographs survive from the turn of the century, Californian world of hydroelectrician, irrigation and water supply expert & conservationist, Walter L. Huber.

In the archives of the University of California, there are 13 feet...

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History

World trapped in glass discovered decaying in remote Romanian cowshed. The haunting lost & now found archives of photographer Costică Acsinte & his village studio, Foto Splendid Slobozia.

Somewhere in the early 2000s, the Ialomita County Museum, a small regional...

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Art & Design History

In 1891, the 27 year old future Tsar Nikolai II ordered a school to be built in a wooden town without one in the middle of nowhere in Russia’s Far East. Have a look around.

Preserved in the National Library of Russia is a 1898 album detailing...

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History Obscurity

150 years of fire in Amsterdam. 1720-1888.

Keizersgracht Theatre Fire of 11 May 1722. In 1664 it was decided...

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Art & Design History

Copper & Steel in Utah. Two epic & obscure early photo stories by Andreas Feininger for the U.S. Office of War Information, 1942.

1. Utah Copper Company at Bingham Canyon, Utah. Andreas Feininger, 1 November...

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Art & Design History

Lewis Wicke Hines. Fake fire inspector, postcard salesman & bible vendor. Child Labor Law superhero and photographer in disguise.

Lewis Wicke Hine (1874 – 1940) was among the first to use...

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History

While Van Gogh was painting Paris, Pavel Mikhailovich Kosharov was transcribing the the dark heart of Siberia.

For almost a hundred years they were unknown to people. In Tomsk,...

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Art & Design History Travel

Joseph B. Lippincott, the forgotten hero hydrographer who brought water from the desert to a thirsty Los Angeles in 1913 & took photos to show us how he did it.

In the beginning Los Angeles was dust, It emerged from the desert....

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History

Inside the Space Cathedral. Cape Canaveral, Florida inside & out by the Historic American Engineering Record program. Late 1960s.

“We’re required to do these things just as salmon swim upstream.” Neil...

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History Travel

George Catlin’s incredibly intimate 1830s portraits of Native American Indians. Pt. 1.

George Catlin (1796 – 1872) was an American lawyer, painter, author, and traveler,...

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Art & Design History Travel

Oh, Evelyn.

At vero eos et accusamus et iusto odio dignissimos ducimus qui blanditiis...

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Art & Design History

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Helene Schjerfbeck began as a precociously skilled, slightly melancholic late-19th-century academic realist. She finished as a painter whose sublime abstract images are an exquisite harmony of pure paint and cryptic description.

“I have to draw to the point of madness, just draw. Just work, work and think of nothing else”, said the brilliant Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. It did him no good, he was just another “degenerate” artist to the Nazis.

From hat shop girl to Dutch art icon. But who was the Girl in the Kimono? The opaque story of an 1890s working class teenager immortalised by George Hendrik Breitner.

Descendant of samurai and relentless entrepreneur, Ogawa Kazumasa opened Tokyo’s first photo studio, shot Japan’s art treasures, the 100 prettiest geisha in Tokyo and taught photography to the military. His legacy is these exquisite images of flowers.

L’Estampe Moderne; the 1890s Parisian Art Nouveau “best of” album feat. various international artists. 4 lithographs every month. Just 3₣r 50c an issue.

It’s easy to see how, in the mid 1800s, Paul Gustave Doré “hypnotized the widest public ever captured by a major illustrator”. Even Van Gogh was a fan, he copied Doré shortly before shooting himself.

In the 1890s the Dutch painter, George Hendrik Breitner took nude reference photos for his paintings. In the 1990s they were found.

Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach. 1880s free love messiah, naturist, pacifist, vegetarian, sun worshipper and unique symbolist painter.

Found photos : Three lost decades of Iowa Speedway recovered. With Merlin Benning, Lester “Red” Dralle. Claus Stricker, Don & Dick Feckers & Red Droste. 1950>1970.

The Art of Protest: Albert Hahn was righteous anger manifest. A graphic character assassin that even the mighty Germany Kaiser feared.

It’s 1914. and Orientalism meets Art Nouveau and the early stirrings of Art Deco in Emile-Allain Séguy’s “Samarkande: 20 Compositions en couleurs dans le Style oriental”.

The 1920s French Art Deco influencer who drew pure design inspiration from the natural world. Insectes (1929) by Émile-Allain Séguy.

The forgotten Finska Vyer birch bark album, by I.K Inha, 1892. Inside are raw natural landscape photographs of Finland. It won the 1st international photographic competion in Paris.

William Morris. Strawberry Thief . “You can picture my Father going out in the early morning and watching the rascally thrushes at work on the fruit beds…”

The Swiss artist, Ernst Kreidolf (1863-1956). A Princess helped him give up the life of a farmer to put his faith and future in the hands of the flower fairies. He lived magically ever after.

Painter & early street photographer. The astonishing early street photography that helped George Hendrik Breitner add social realism to his famous paintings of Amsterdam.

India mid-1800s : Dr John Murray, cholera specialist an photographer. He spent 40 years travelling with gear weighing 400 pounds and a servant. His ever so slightly psychedelic negatives made it all worth it.

Samarkand, early 1900s. The first ever colour photographs of the ancient Persian city by Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky, an unknown Russian who invented his own colour photography process.

It’s 1914. and Orientalism meets Art Nouveau and the early stirrings of Art Deco in Emile-Allain Séguy’s “Samarkande: 20 Compositions en couleurs dans le Style oriental”.

Around the world with the rare travel drawings by the American painter, Frederic Edwin Church (1826–1900). Found in the archives of the Huntington Library, San Marino, CA.

History

3 years in the life of a shadowy Dutch artist in a cloak and hat. The revealing 1800s visual diaries of Christiaan Andriessen. The Amsterdam Drawing Academy wouldn’t let him draw female nudes so he left to set up a studio at home.

Only 35 photographs survive from the turn of the century, Californian world of hydroelectrician, irrigation and water supply expert & conservationist, Walter L. Huber.

World trapped in glass discovered decaying in remote Romanian cowshed. The haunting lost & now found archives of photographer Costică Acsinte & his village studio, Foto Splendid Slobozia.

In 1891, the 27 year old future Tsar Nikolai II ordered a school to be built in a wooden town without one in the middle of nowhere in Russia’s Far East. Have a look around.

150 years of fire in Amsterdam. 1720-1888.

Copper & Steel in Utah. Two epic & obscure early photo stories by Andreas Feininger for the U.S. Office of War Information, 1942.

Lewis Wicke Hines. Fake fire inspector, postcard salesman & bible vendor. Child Labor Law superhero and photographer in disguise.

While Van Gogh was painting Paris, Pavel Mikhailovich Kosharov was transcribing the the dark heart of Siberia.

Joseph B. Lippincott, the forgotten hero hydrographer who brought water from the desert to a thirsty Los Angeles in 1913 & took photos to show us how he did it.

Inside the Space Cathedral. Cape Canaveral, Florida inside & out by the Historic American Engineering Record program. Late 1960s.

George Catlin’s incredibly intimate 1830s portraits of Native American Indians. Pt. 1.

Oh, Evelyn.