Authorillustrob is the founding voice behind Illustrated Past, with a taste for archival oddities, visual storytelling, and the human drama hidden inside old photographs. His work emphasizes curiosity, narrative energy, and the pleasure of looking closely at images that might otherwise be overlooked.
This photo ranks with the raising of the American flag on Iwo Jima as one of the most iconic photos of World War 2. It shows a young Soviet soldier raising the flag of the USSR on the roof of the German parliament building, even as…
Members of the Bay City Wheelmen Cycling Club. San Francisco 1890. It is an interesting historical coincidence that the bicycle and the automobile were developed at roughly the same time, and both achieved their first practical commercial…
What as San Francisco like just before the Great Earthquake of 1906? There are few surviving photographic records from before the devastating earthquake, both because photography and motion pictures were still rare, but also because many…
The saloon or watering hole has come to epitomize the Old West. Every town had one, and this is where everything happened: where the corrupt local boss held court, where the mysterious stranger from out of town confronted the local bully,…
This remarkable photo was taken in 1858 and shows the Chutter Manzil Palace in Lucknow, India. The year is 1858 and the Indian Mutiny has just been brutally suppressed by the British. India in 1858 – The Fish Boat The Photograph This is a…
wpsso pinterest pin it image added on 2021-05-17T03:09:38+00:00 .wpsso-pinterest-pin-it-image This rare photo from 1860 Japan shows two Samurais training to use a bow and arrow while their seasoned instructor looks on. First let’s look at…
wpsso pinterest pin it image added on 2021-06-14T04:00:38+00:00 .wpsso-pinterest-pin-it-image For thousands of years, the so-called Silk Road trade route connected the Empire of China with Europe, bringing silk, tea, and exotic merchandise…
The “Peacemaker” submarine during testing in New York Harbor, 1885 Here we see the “Peacemaker” an advanced yet ultimately failed submarine about to take a test run in New York harbor in 1885. The submarine and its inventor provide an…
As the world wrestles with Covid, it’s worth remembering that things could always be worse. We could be dealing with an outbreak of smallpox or bubonic plague. One particularly bad outbreak of the bubonic plague, dubbed the Black Death,…
This photo is of an unidentified Blackfoot warrior was taken in the late some time between 1875 and 1890. It was published as a greeting card by the firm of Calgary, Alberta. This photo was produced by the Albumen process and is mounted on…
wpsso pinterest pin it image added on 2021-05-20T03:07:53+00:00 .wpsso-pinterest-pin-it-image Today our time machine takes us to a jewellery store in Knoxville, Tennessee. It is 1899 and the owner, Mr. Dodson, is busy working on a watch so…
In this grainy vintage photo we see Virginia Nevada’s brass band sitting on the back of a horse-drawn carriage. Virginia City Brass Band, 1888 The caption beneath the photograph (not reproduced) identifies the building and the men on the…
The Beginning of Better Things? – Certainly Not for the Buffalo Okay, I couldn’t come up with a catchy title for this picture but it pretty much sums it up: two men sit in front of a squalid sod house while in front of them is a pile of…
wpsso pinterest pin it image added on 2021-05-20T04:37:51+00:00 .wpsso-pinterest-pin-it-image The Cossacks were a seminomadic people living in quasi military communities on the Russian and Ukrainian Steppes. During the Russian Empire, they…
wpsso pinterest pin it image added on 2021-05-18T05:38:34+00:00 .wpsso-pinterest-pin-it-image Suffragette Parade, 1913 It is hard to imagine that not that long ago, women did not have the right to vote in the United States. Although giving…
Members of the Bay City Wheelmen Cycling Club. San Francisco 1890. This old photo taken in a photographer’s studio shows some unidentified members of the San Francisco cycling club known as the Bay City Wheelmen. The club was very…
This remarkable video shot on the streets of Tokyo, Japan shows daily life in the Imperial Japanese Capital in 1913. The original film was in black and white and soundless. This video has been upscaled and colorized using a neural network.…
Man Demonstrating a Victorian Bicep Curl Machine Victorian Fitness Machines and Contraptions The dapper man in this photo of demonstrating a bicep curl machine from the 1890s. This was one of the many fitness machines invented by Dr. Jonas…
This beautiful photograph of Dublin’s Sackville Street and O’Connol Bridge was taken in 1890 using the photochrom process. The photochrom process was an early method of printing color photographs which relied on detailed note taking by the…
Although movie special effects have made great strides in the last ten years, largely thanks to CGI and improvements in the use of green screen, many of the film techniques and special effects we use today were actually developed by the…
Below is a famous color photograph of Mulberry Street, in New York City taken in 1900 at the heart of the city’s Little Italy district. It shows a moment in time in a busy ethnic neighborhood. You can imagine the sounds of kids playing,…
wpsso pinterest pin it image added on 2021-05-19T04:28:41+00:00 .wpsso-pinterest-pin-it-image Officers of the Tobacco Trade Union, 1900 This is a group photograph of the directors of the Tobacco Trade Union based in Petersburg, Virginia.…
wpsso pinterest pin it image added on 2021-06-14T03:28:41+00:00 .wpsso-pinterest-pin-it-image What is a Cigar Store Indian? The cigar store Indian is a form of iconic advertising art consisting of a stylized rendition of a Native American,…
What was it like to work on an assembly line at the start of the 20th century? The assembly line system had revolutionized American industry and greatly increased the productivity of factories. Today, we take this system for granted and we…
.wpsso-pinterest-pin-it-image Every photo is like a time machine, capturing a moment in time and then transporting it frozen, like a prehistoric insect caught in amber, to the present day. However a photo does not just bring the picture…
wpsso pinterest pin it image added on 2021-05-24T23:14:30+00:00 .wpsso-pinterest-pin-it-image Snake Charming Snake Charming is an ancient tradition that is believed to have originated in India during the remote past. From there, the…
