The New Jersey shore circa 1905. "Boardwalk and beach, Asbury Park." 8x10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company. View full size.

Detroit circa 1912. "Elliott, Taylor & Woolfenden -- north aisle." 8x10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company. View full size.

"James Dawson, arrested for Indecent Exposure. North Shields Police Station, 9th June 1902." Our first image from a photograph album of prisoners brought before the North Shields Police Court in England between 1902 and 1916, now in the collection of the Tyne & Wear Archives and Museums. View full size.

St. John the Baptist Parish, Louisiana, 1938. "Evergreen -- Wallace vicinity. Structure dates from 1835. Abandoned. Canal Bank Liquidators." 8x10 inch acetate negative by Frances Benjamin Johnston. View full size.

August 1940. Vergennes, Vermont. "Sunbathing on the common." 35mm negative by Louise Rosskam for the Farm Security Administration. View full size.

Duluth, Minnesota, circa 1898. "General view from bluffs." Panorama of two 8x10 inch glass negatives, Detroit Publishing Company. View full size.

Washington, D.C., circa 1921. "Rudnick Tire Co., front." With perhaps Rudnick himself. National Photo Company Collection glass negative. View full size.

August 1940. "Souvenir shop, Provincetown, Massachusetts." 35mm negative by Edwin Rosskam for the Farm Security Administration. View full size.

My father - here about to turn 75 - browses the tool and garden section of a Montgomery Ward sales catalog in the living room of our Larkspur, California home. We were regular Wards customers, for both in-store purchases and catalog orders. Several editions of their complete catalog were always to be seen on bottom shelf of the pink enamel cart in the Salmon Kitchen™, conveniently located for my mother's perusal. She was of the generation that still occasionally referred to it as a "wish book," although that term most often meant the Sears catalog. Non-union Sears, however, was off-limits to us as Father, a member of the Retail Clerks International Union, was loath to be seen entering one of their stores. In the background, my record collection. Some sharp-eyed Shorpy detectives might be able to identify the chap pictured on the one on the middle shelf, but extra points for pinpointing the album. Note, though, that there's something of a forensic complication. Kodachrome slide, shot with bounce flash.

August 1940. Provincetown, Massachusetts. "Beach scene at New Beach, the most popular beach near Provincetown. Regular bus service makes this beach easily available; lack of bath houses causes a great deal of picturesque dressing and undressing in and behind parked cars." 35mm nitrate negative by Edwin Rosskam for the Farm Security Administration. View full size.

Circa 1906. "Steamer New York on the Hudson. Boat landing at Kingston Point." 8x10 inch glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company. View full size.

Circa 1906. "Broadway, Kingston, New York." 8x10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company. View full size.

December 1942. "Proviso Yards, Chicago. A Chicago & North Western Railroad roundhouse." 4x5 Kodachrome transparency by Jack Delano. View full size.

Circa 1906. "Post Office, Albany, New York," amid the usual cat's cradle of streetcar, telephone and telegraph wires. If the byword of 1960s America was "plastics," half a century earlier it was "copper." View full size.

Detroit circa 1912. "Elliott, Taylor & Woolfenden -- cloak and suit." 8x10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company. View full size.