Public entertainment leaves behind some of the liveliest images in the historical record. Performers pose with theatrical flair, athletes and clubs document their membership, circus posters promise marvels, and musicians gather in their formal best. This section explores the history of leisure, sport, celebrity, performance, and spectacle. The images are valuable because they show communities presenting themselves to the world: what they admired, what they found funny, what they considered modern, and how they staged ambition, elegance, skill, or eccentricity for the camera.
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…
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…
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…
A fancy dressed man with a riding whip rides a very big pig, somewhere in England during the early 1900s. Man Riding a Pig Apparently this is still a thing in parts of rural England. Riding pigs and pig races may not have the cachet of…
the greatest show on earth Wild Animals at the Circus A 1901 poster advertising a show by the Barnum and Bailey Circus , billed as the Greatest Show on Earth. The circus was especially popular in the early 1900s and toured all over the…
Picture of Actress Sarah Bernhardt, 1865 Picture of French Actress Sarah Bernhardt, 1865 This is a photograph of an exotic looking Sarah Bernhardt , taken when she was about 21 years old. Bernhardt was one of the first world wide…
worldseries1912 A large crowd turns out to watch the first game of the 1912 World Series, which saw the Boston Red Sox beat the New York Giants four games to three (with one tie). The picture was taken on Tuesday, October 8, 1912 at the…
