Thomas Smillie was the Smithsonian’s first photographer and curator of photography. He and his studio staff re-shot many of the photographs collected by the institution’s scientists, including documentation of Smithsonian-sponsored expeditions as well as images of scientific phenomena.

Town Hall, Sydney

1900

Home exhibition: A vacuum cleaner used as a hair dryer, Amsterdam.

1960s

Lace

Artist: William Henry Fox Talbot
Artist Bio: British, 1800 - 1877
Creation Date: c. 1842

Beauty in riding gear, 1880s

Ed van der Elsken, self-portrait with Ata Kandó, 1953

Old Japan in 3D

These animated images are taken from original stereoscopic photographs by T. Enami, and were animated from images posted by Okinawa Soba. The images date from about 1895 to about 1910.

The U.S. Air Force attacking railroads south of Wonsan on the eastern coast of North Korea;
Korean war: (25 June 1950 – armistice signed 27 July 1953)

1968. rare color portraits of the 24-year-old rocker/poet Jim Morrison, plus a few previously unpublished shots of the Doors playing New York’s famed Fillmore East.

(Photos: Yale Joel—TIME & LIFE Pictures/Getty Images)