Children at play circa 1920 as captured by the pioneering news photographer and society portraitist Jessie Tarbox Beals (1870-1942). View full size. In 2000 the New York Times reviewed a retrospective of her work: "One of the reasons so few women entered the profession was that equipment was so heavy. Beals carried an 8-by-10 view camera, glass plates and a tripod, close to 50 pounds of paraphernalia. (She was further encumbered by a whalebone corset and a hat the size of a flying saucer.) Still, when a judge in a murder trial locked the photographers out, she climbed a tall bookcase up to a transom window, snapped a picture before she was detected and had a five-column front-page photograph."

August 1939. Migratory boy in squatter camp. Has come to Yakima Valley, Washington, for the third year to pick hops. Mother: "You'd be surprised what that boy can pick." View full size. Photograph by Dorothea Lange.

July 1943. Scene in a wholesale meat market shot for the Office of War Information film "Black Marketing." View full size. Photo by Roger Smith.

New York, June 1943. "Children escape the heat of the East Side by using fire hydrant as a shower bath." View full size. Photograph by Roger Smith.

July 1935. "Back street. Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania. Westmoreland County." View full size. Photograph by Walker Evans, Farm Security Administration.

May 1938. Farm boy who sells "Grit." Irwinville Farms, Georgia. View full size. 35mm nitrate negative by John Vachon for the Farm Security Administration.

Spring 1942. "Girl having her tire changed in Southeast Washington." Photograph by Marjory Collins, Farm Security Administration. View full size.

October 1942. North American Aviation workers assembling wing component for a P-51 fighter. View full size. 4x5 Kodachrome transparency by Alfred Palmer.

Main house at Elmwood, a pre-Revolutionary plantation in Essex County, Virginia, photographed in 1941 for the Historic American Buildings Survey. The 1852 Victorian stair tower to the left of the main entrance was removed in a 1950s restoration of the house, which was built around 1770. View full size. For a view of the house after it was restored click here.

Rear view of the main house at Elmwood, the 1770s Garnett family estate in Essex County, Virginia, near Loretto. View full size. Photographed in 1941 for the Historic American Buildings Survey. House and grounds restored in the 1950s.

"Boys camped at Wyndygoul, the camp of the Pocatopog tribe" circa 1908. View full size. 8x10 glass plate negative, George Grantham Bain Collection.

Wyndygoul Council and War Dance at Medicine Rock circa 1908. Wyndygoul, aka the "camp of the Pocatopog tribe," was the Cos Cob, Connecticut, estate of writer-naturalist Ernest Thompson Seton, founder of the Woodcraft Indian movement, and one of the founders of the Boy Scouts of America. View full size. 8x10 glass plate negative, George Grantham Bain Collection.

Deer hunt at Wyndygoul circa 1908. View full size. G.G. Bain Collection.

Three boys diving from mudbank circa 1935, location unknown. View full size. 5x7 safety film negative, Acme News Photo archive, Library of Congress.

December 1937. Gamecocks in the training arena in Puerto Rico. Photograph by Edwin Rosskam, Farm Security Administration. View full size.