Banner Ladies: The Human Billboards of Yesteryear

Whether you’ve traded your old sofa on Craigslist or advertised your business and its products to the world, we’ve all had to dabble in the art of promotion at one point or another. In my experience, creativity is key, and it doesn’t get much more creative than the advertising style of 19th century banner ladies,…

13 Things I Found on the Internet Today (Vol. CCLXIV)

1. French Facade Fakery Facades is an ongoing series by French photographer Zacharie Gaudrillot-Roy (previously) which strips isolated buildings of everything but their forward-facing exteriors. It reminds me of another photography project that turned Paris into a giant film set. Found via This is Colossal. 2. A Peephole Cinema A tiny theater hidden in an alley in…

Time Capsule Diner Hiding in a New Orleans Record Store

I‘m having a very ‘Americana nostalgia’ day here at MessyNessyChic HQ for some reason (see previous post on all things stuck in the 1950s), which segue-ways into today’s second time travelling discovery. I first spotted this retired mid-century diner in the archives of the instagram account American Squares. “A junk store built around an old…

This Time Travelling Instagrammer got Stuck Somewhere in the 1950s

Diners, Cadillacs, neon signs and ice cream pastels– Leah Frances, eats, sleeps and breathes American nostalgia. She is the Canadian-born, Brooklyn-based photographer behind American Squares, my latest “where have you been all my life” instagram discovery. This is an account for bingeing on vintage Americana, predominantly stuck in the 1950s, sometimes jumping back to the…

Journey to the North Pole in a Hot Air Balloon

This is the forgotten story of a brave (and perhaps slightly mad) scientist and his two men, who made a perilous one way journey to the furthest ends of the earth. And if an expedition to the North Pole in itself wasn’t dangerous enough, they decided they would do it in a hydrogen balloon. Thirty-three…

13 Things I Found on the Internet Today (Vol. CCLXIII)

1. Underwater Works By photographer James Casebere. 2. Beneath Antarctica’s Sea Ice Whoever you are, whatever you do, your job is almost certainly boring as hell compared with the researchers who spent the last six weeks diving beneath Antarctica’s sea ice to study alien life forms on the ocean floor. Found on Earther. 3.…

Don’t be a Tourist, Episode 2: Parisian Ghost Town

And we’re back with another episode from our new web series, Don’t be a Tourist in Paris. Before you tuck in, this is the second episode, which means you should probably go back and watch Episode 1 if you haven’t already seen it. Or just watch it after. I’m not fussy. For today’s line-up, your…

America’s Last Snake-handling Cults

I wandered into the weird part of the internet again this morning, through the doors of a snake-handling church in the Appalachian mountains of West Virginia, to be specific. I stumbled upon a peculiar documentary from 1977, an in-depth portrait of a snake cult that exists still to this day, in a tiny unincorporated community…

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A Counterfeit Dreamland Lost

When I share a new photographer’s (or anyone’s) work on this blog, I guess the ultimate hope is that they might get in contact one day with the news that they just had a sold out show or scored a publishing deal for their own book. Well recently, that hope finally became a reality when…

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13 Things I Found on the Internet Today (Vol. CCLXII)

1. Gustave Eiffel’s Swiss Villa Getaway Villa Claire, named after his daughter, was Gustave Eiffel’s preferred place of rest when he wasn’t building giant iron towers or attempting to engineer the Panama Canal. In Vevey, Switzerland. From a collection at Musée D’Orsay, prints for sale on Muzeo. 2. Just a Tennis Court inside a…