Methods of transportation, from horse-drawn carriages to helicopters, from airplanes to automobiles, and from trains to trolleys offer a seemingly endless variety of visual inspiration. Some images capture a singular moment in history, some a flight of fancy which does not last, while others show us the progression over time as clever minds invent and re-invent. In our newest monthly series, Pictures to Go, we will journey through our collections to uncover pictures which fit all of the above.
We’ll start off with a colorful peek at what a 1910 artist saw as an encapsulation of twentieth century transportation, despite being a mere decade into that century.
In every corner, we see an example of how people traveled the U.S. and the world: by air, by water, by rail, and by road. It makes me wonder what an artist today would include in a depiction of twenty-first century transportation!
Learn More:
- Explore some of the thousands of images on the subject of transportation within the Prints and Photographs Online Catalog. The entry for “Transportation” in the Thesaurus for Graphic Materials offers related subject terms that link to additional images.
- Travel around the world through the photographs of William Henry Jackson as he traveled with the nineteenth century World’s Transportation Commission (WTC). Read more about the WTC and their journey.
- View selected historical images of various modes of transportation, such as steamships and automobiles, among the many topics covered in the illustrated lists of Pictorial Americana.