Sound and Vision

Members of a Polka Band at the Gibbon Ballroom in Minnesota in the 1950s. Courtesy of the U.S. National Archives.

Sea of Love : Jacques-Yves Cousteau

"The best way to observe a fish is to become a fish"

"Sometimes we are lucky enough to know that our lives have been changed, to discard the old, embrace the new, and turn headlong down an immutable course"

Jacques Cousteau and crew aboard the Calypso for National Geographic in the 1950s.

"A lot of people attack the sea, I make love to it"

Double Exposure

Polaroid Portrait by Dustin Hollywood

Double Exposure / Found Photograph circa 1950

Polaroid Portrait by Polaboid

Shady Lady

Vintage illustration, couple on Lambretta, 1950s.

Skulls Don't Have Eyeballs

And yet ...they look so cool in sunglasses!

On The Brink

Beautifying Opticians of 1950

Smoke Screen Sampler

Vintage Experiments on the Blind!

HDV absolutely loves these photographs, taken sometime in the mid to late fifties in Austria. It appears as if they are doing sensory experiments on the blind, but we would really love to hear what the original hypotheses were being tested here. Make up your own!

Cosmic Knight | Isaac Asimov

Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today - but the core of science fiction, its essence has become crucial to our salvation if we are to be saved at all.

-Isaac Asimov

Perfect From Now On | Fifties Future Frames

every thousand years
this metal sphere
ten times the size of Jupiter
floats just a few yards past the earth
you climb on your roof
and take a swipe at it
with a single feather
hit it once every thousand years
'til you've worn it down
to the size of a pea
yeah I'd say that's a long time
but it's only half a blink
in the place you're gonna be

where you gonna be
where will you spend eternity
I'm gonna be perfect from now on
I'm gonna be perfect starting now
stop making that sound
stop making that sound
I will say I forgot
but it was only yesterday
and it's all you had to say

-Randy Described Eternity (Perfect From Now On, 1997) Built to Spill

Milk into Milk | Experimental Alchemy with Harry Smith

Untitled, Harry Smith, 1978

Untitled, Harry Smith, 1978

Untitled, Harry Smith, 1978

VISIT THE HARRY SMITH ARCHIVES