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Category / Nostalgia

There’s an Alternate Universe of Pre-MTV Music Videos You’ve Never Seen

The birth of the music video is often credited to MTV. It was 1981 when the first 24-hour music channel launched on our screens with “Video Killed the Radio Star”. Oh the irony, right? Wrong. Video and the radio star actually go way back. Get comfortable, because we’re about to have some fun getting to…

A Bewitching Compendium of Victorians Letting their Hair Down

There was one fairytale character in particular that seemed to leave an impression on the ladies of the Victorian era. Rapunzel was originally written in 1790 by Friedrich Schulz and retold by the Brothers Grimm in 1812. The story was told during the Georgian era where long, loose straggling locks were unheard of and ringlets in…

Discovering Dalida, the Tragic Diva

Before living in Paris, I did not know Dalida, but this city was on a first-name basis with her– heck, they even called her “Saint Dalida”. She sold more than 170 million albums worldwide, had a career that spanned over 30 years and became an international icon, ranking among the biggest singers of all time. And yet, outside…

Street Style of the Great American Road Trip

In the late 1970s, Roger Minick set out with his wife in their VW camper on a road trip around the western United States, with the sole purpose of photographing sightseers. Minick is widely known for his series documenting tourists in the National Parks of the United States and has been published in numerous books and exhibited around…

The Millionaire Teenage Ad Girl who wrote the Book on Jazz Age Etiquette

Are you haunted by the ghosts of your social mistakes? Have you ever suffered the humiliation of fluffing a greeting with an acquaintance in the street? Or the ignominy of using the wrong fork at the dining table? Around a century ago, such social gaffes and embarrassing blunders were seen to be daily pitfalls, waiting to…

The Secret Invention behind Michael Jackson’s Anti-Gravity Lean

Ever since the first time I saw Michael Jackson do his infamous gravity-defying lean in Moonwalker, it’s remained a total mystery as to how he and his dancers did it. I hopelessly attempted it in front of the television screen for years. But today, the mystery came to an end today and it feels ever…

A Back to the Future Tour of Paris in the 1950s

Straight out of a Jetsons cartoon, get a load of this Citroen U55 Currus Cityrama tour bus that ruled the roads of Paris in the 1950s. It’s futuristic design was ahead of its time and turned heads wherever it went. No one had seen anything like it before and even today this retro bus looks…

Inventing the “Stepford Wives” American Dream Town

The first thing to know when walking around Levittown, PA, is that it is very easy to get lost. The leafy winding streets often double back on themselves, and confusingly, the street names in the different parts of town not only all begin with the same letter, but have similar sounding, idyllic names; Shadetree Lane,…

Weekend at Wallis & Edward’s Secret French Cottage

For the man who gave up the throne of England to be with the women he loved, living in seclusion became a life sentence. Exiled from England to avoid stirring up trouble for the Royal Family, Edward and his American wife settled in Paris and lived in the beautiful Chateau Le Bois, which became better known…

Saving China’s Memories from the Trash, One Kodak at a Time

What do giant sharks, gymnastics, and a banana-eating competition have in common? They all inhabit the fantastic world of “Beijing Silvermine.” For almost a decade now, this has been the curious project of French photographer Thomas Sauvin, who has been on a tireless mission to rescue and revive the millions of 35 mm negatives floating…

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