Trusted Writing on History, Travel, and American Culture Since 1949
SEARCH 75 YEARS OF ESSAYS!
Photography
One of the defining images of World War II continues to be trailed by controversy.
An exhibit now touring the U.S. highlights the Civil Rights struggles of the 1960s, with a focus on the violence and brutality endured by its participants.
Twenty-five years after Grace Kelly’s tragic death, Howell Conant’s photographs of her still resonate with the “natural glamour” that changed Hollywood.
It was an extraordinary friendship between photographer and subject. Over a period spanning 27 years, from the early years of her Hollywood fame to her tragic car accident in 1982, Howell Conant captured Grace Kelly as she blossomed from a movie legend into a princess and then mother and royal role model. In the process, Conant broke through the cold, goddess-style portrait style that was the vogue and created a new look in Hollywood portraits: natural glamour. Yet, throughout, Conant acted not just as her official photographer but also her confidant, who had access to Grace in her most private moments.
Twenty-five years after Grace Kelly’s tragic death, Howell Conant’s photographs of her still resonate with the “natural glamour” that changed Hollywood.
It was an extraordinary friendship between photographer and subject. Over a period spanning 27 years, from the early years of her Hollywood fame to her tragic car accident in 1982, Howell Conant captured Grace Kelly as she blossomed from a movie legend into a princess and then mother and royal role model. In the process, Conant broke through the cold, goddess-style portrait style that was the vogue and created a new look in Hollywood portraits: natural glamour. Yet, throughout, Conant acted not just as her official photographer but also her confidant, who had access to Grace in her most private moments.
On a 1947 trip up north with his son, Ansel Adams took a remarkable photograph that brought Alaska's grandeur to the American public on a large scale for the first time.
In the summer of 1947, Ansel Adams and his 14-year-old son, Michael, undertook a six-week journey through Alaska that would have notable consequences for the history of conservation.
An ambitious young magazine editor and a tormented photographer together discovered a Marilyn Monroe who nobody knew.
The most indispensable photographs show us who we are: the formal portraits of our great-grandparents as newly arrived immigrants and our own parents on their wedding day; the candid snapshots of our youthful selves and of our own children at moments in time gone forever.
What digital-camera makers learned from George Eastman
It is an axiom that one technology replaces another only because the new technology is better or cheaper, or both.
When we scheduled John Lukacs’s article about Americans in Venice to run in the previous issue, we assumed that it would be the easiest of stories to illustrate: After all, that city has been living on its looks alone for more than two centuries now.
This issue of American Heritage is unlike any that has ever before been published. As you’ll see, it contains just one feature story, which is not, strictly speaking, a real story at that.
It’s one in a billion.
America entered the 20th century with its finger on the shutter of Kodak’s Brownie (“You press the button; we do the rest”).
If you’ll turn to the portfolio of Mexican War daguerreotypes that accompanies our story on the San Patricios in this issue, you will find in the picture credits a spate of curatorial jabber.
Baby pictures make up a large proportion of submissions to this feature. All of them are engaging, but few leap from the page—and the past—as this one does. Dr. Richard R. Rutter, of Burlingame, California, explains:
I’ve recently moved up in the world, from the tenth floor to the seventeenth, and four blocks closer to the Hudson River, a slate gray slice of which I can just see from where I’m writing.
The United States Army has always been secretive about its defense installations. In the summer of 1864, a breach of security took place on the tiny island fortress of Alcatraz that reverberated all the way back to the War Department in Washington.
My grandfather, Connecticut-bred, was a saver.
Featured Authors
