George Robert Vitkos Press

10/08/2025

10/08/2025

Two daughters wash the family car while their mother looks on, Enid, Oklahoma, 1948.

10/08/2025

A police officer measures the length of a woman's swimsuit to enforce beach modesty laws that prohibited suits more than 6 inches above the knee. Women in violation could be asked to leave the beach or even arrested, 1920s.

10/08/2025

A photograph, taken c. 1900, by Sir Benjamin Stone, of two villagers at the Bidford Mop, an annual fair held at Michaelmas in the village of Bidford-on-Avon

10/08/2025

Another photo showing one of Caligula's Nemi ships. It was taken in circa 1931 and shows the second ship (seconda nave), which was slightly larger than the other one (prima nave). They measured 73 by 24 metres (240 by 79 ft) and 70 by 20 metres (230 by 66 ft).
In 1927, Benito Mussolini ordered Lake Nemi to be drained to expose and recover two ancient ships that had been built on the orders of Roman emperor Caligula in the 1st century AD. They had been deliberately sunk, probably following Caligula's death, and had been on the bottom of the lake for almost 1,900 years.
The first ship saw the light of day in 1929, and the following year, the second, and larger one, was exposed. In this photo, you can see the waters of the lake are low giving the appearance the second ship is floating.
By 1932, both ships had been recovered and were later housed in a museum built especially for them. After spending almost 1,900 years underwater, the ships survived for just 12 years out of the lake. In 1944, during World War II, they were destroyed by fire, either by German soldiers in a deliberate act, or accidently by US artillery shells aimed at the retreating Germans.

10/08/2025

A happy French girl smiling as she holds her cat outside their home in 1959.

10/08/2025

The rural school opened in 1979, when there were still elementary schools in the small settlements.

10/08/2025

Here is the delicious boiled corn! Budapest 1954

10/07/2025

1978, when Big Willie and the Brotherhood of Street Racers fired up a Funny Car in downtown LA to protest lack of permitting for a drag strip at Terminal Island.

10/07/2025

A corn binder driven by a Swartzentruber Amish boy. It works similarly to the way a grain binder binds grain. The corn stalks are cut several inches above ground level. The implement pulls stalks together then wraps and ties (binds) the grouping of stalks (sheaves) and throws them off to the side onto the ground. The sheaves are later gathered by hand, thrown onto a wagon, hauled off, put through a chopper, and whisked into the silo to become sileage. The corn binder is ground driven, meaning the mechanical moving parts and pieces of the binder work only as long as the implement is moving along the ground. Thus the horses pull the implement and power the unit. Quite the process. Hope I got that all right. JD

10/07/2025

Budapest Csepeli Free Port, Petroleum Street 4, the site of the Merkur Passenger Car Sales Company. The 100,000th Wartburg delivered to Hungary in 1977.

10/07/2025

During the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge (1933–1937), chief engineer Joseph Strauss made worker safety a priority. One of his biggest innovations was the installation of a safety net made of manila rope and suspended underneath the bridge deck. This net cost about $130,000 (a huge sum at the time), but it dramatically reduced fatalities compared to similar large projects. 19 workers fell into the net during construction and survived. They became known as the “Halfway to Hell Club.” Without the net, the death toll would have been much higher. In total, 11 men died during the project, which was considered an extraordinarily low number for a project of that scale in the 1930s.