Saving a news photo from anonymity - a "Then & Now" variation.

[VisforVictory]

When I sat at the photo assignment desk at the Daily News, few things would irritate me as much as an incomplete or missing caption on an incoming photograph. Not only did it make it harder to deal with for its immediate purpose, but it potentially jeopardized the picture's long-term value as an historical document. Pictures can speak a thousand words, but sometimes words help when you want to learn about the picture.

This was my problem when I found an old news photo on eBay of a fatal accident, presumably taken somewhere in New York City, with no information attached. I wanted to know more about it.

Read about it here.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Impressive piece of detective work -- well done.

For those who haven't yet discovered them, the Brooklyn Eagle archives are an absolute gold mine for those who research the Era. The only thing that could be better would be for the Daily News itself to have its archives available online -- there is no better chronicle of how the mid-twentieth-century working-class urban American viewed the world. The Times might be the "Paper of Record," but the News was the "Paper of Reality."

 

[VisforVictory]

Couldn't agree more. Although there's something nice about the steel cabinets of microfilm, and up until the News left West 33rd St., the clip files. Drawers of paper envelopes with actual clippings (not just from the News, but all the other local papers, alphabetized by subject name, with wax pencil notations.) Not publicly accessible, and since moved to the Jersey City printing facility. The photo archive is fairly well represented online, though!