History

There was a brief period, starting around 1918, where the military decided that a good way to use its trained soldiers was to create enormous, perspective corrected images out of them. Dubbed "living photographs", the technique was pioneered by Arthur Mole, and sometimes involved tens of thousands of people to craft these massive compositions.

Magic: Stage Illusions and Scientific Diversions, including Trick Photography is not a small book. Clocking in at 580 pages, this tome from 1897 is a compilation of tricks and trickery from the Victorain age, compiled and edited by Albert A. Hopkins. While most of its hefty length is devoted to the stage craft that made illusionists and magicians so popular, the last few hundred pages are something equally interesting: early trick photography.

This is a good time to be on the internet if you're a fan of old photos. The most recent stash comes in the form of 1,000 photographs from the Farm Security Administration photo project that have been rediscovered at the New York Public Library. Originally part of a 41,000-item collection sent by the project's founder Roy Stryker to Ramona Javitz at the NYPL in the early 20th century, the photos are a glimpse into the rural American lifestyle.