When I was young my parents rented a cottage on Lake Michigan for several summers, and one of the things I most treasured about our time there was the collection of National Geographic magazines that I could read through as much as I wanted. Those yellow covers held so many wonders! From wild animals to exotic cultures and maps of countries I’d never heard of, I would pour over the magazines every time I was there, and I don’t think I ever even made a dent in the huge collection.

National Geographic has launched a tumblr site called FOUND where they are sharing photos from their 125 years of archives, many of which were never published, and I can’t get enough. I have been pouring over these for days. Some of my favorites are images of women in daily life, who seem so very real and even surprisingly modern, regardless of what they were wearing or what decade it was. I think the ability to create an image that is timeless but yet so indicative of a specific moment in time has to be the mark of a truly great photographer.

El Paso, Texas, 1939. Photo by Luis Marden.

Bucharest, Romania, 1930. Photo by Wilhelm Tolbien.

Hawaii, 1938. Photo by Richard Hewett Stewart.

London, 1966. Photo by James P. Blair.

Washington, DC, 1923. Photo by Maynard Owen Williams.

Visit FOUND for a lot more amazing photos and to see the captions for the photos I shared.

{ discovered via Lovely Struck }