Pacific Tides
My name is Thomas Sturm and I'm a programmer, photographer and writer.

Now go outside and look at the sky.

The Past is Now

Shorpy.com is a photo blog that features some of the best scans of early photographs from the 1900s to the 1940s. Many of the early black and white photos are very dramatic and many feature scenes of the daily lives of child laborers in coal mines and factories.

And then there are some amazing color photographs from the early 1940s that bring the history to life like nothing else. Just check out "N and Union: 1942" for a taste of the quality of the photos on this site. I could spend hours looking at these pictures - while historical black-and-white shots are always interesting and often beautiful, they do seem remote. But the color photos make you see the world through the eyes of the people who are there... Suddenly the colorful advertisements come to life, and the people in the photos become real human beings, not just lifeless statues.

© 1998 - 2024 Thomas Sturm