National Geographic is synonymous with some of the world’s finest photography, and that is only what they publish. Buried deep with its archives lie forgotten, unpublished photographs of life across the world, spanning almost a century. Images so fascinating that they make one wonder how did these not make the cut?
Well, they have now.
Found is Nat Geo’s photo stream on Tumblr, launched in 2013 to mark the iconic Yellow Window’s 125th birthday.
As a part of our ongoing series of curations from Nat Geo’s archives of hundreds of unpublished images, Quint Lens presents Part II of the same: some of the best documentary photography over the last century that captures the many shades of the world, its people and the places of a bygone time.
Alexander Graham Bell and Mabel kissing within a tetrahedral kite, October 1903.
Men climb the mast of a fishing boat to furl the sail in Port Said, Egypt, 1924.A chorus line high kicks during a show at Cafe Le Can Can in Miami Beach, Florida, 1963.A man stands next to the cross-section of a giant redwood tree in California, 1909.Seated villagers wave arms as they enact a play in front of a temple in Bali, Indonesia, 1969.A girl pets a calf in Scotland, 1918.Two dancers in costume stand between the columns of Poseidon’s Temple, Greece, 1930.An Egyptian belly dancer performs for tourists in a nightclub in Cairo, 1972.
Pope John Paul II carries Holy Communion before Mass on Holy Thursday in Rome, 1985.A man burns prickly pear to feed the cattle during a drought in Texas.The first successful aerial color photograph — which shows the Statue of Liberty —used the Finlay process, 1931.Wealthy Muslims examine the wedding finery of a bride in Dhaka, Bangladesh, 1972.Dozens of visitors frolic in the water as seen through a palm frond in Acapulco, Mexico, 1964.
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Personifying evil, a costumed mapico dancer in Mozambique hides from spectators, 1964.Women dance to send off a friend on an airplane trip in Mopti, Mali, 1966.A sled dog, tied to a whale rib, howls under the midnight sun in Alaska, 1969.
Visitors crowd a casino roulette table in Swaziland, 1969.Women sit in a chic boutique in Casablanca, 1971.A shielded dummy in a basement for atomic bomb-testing in Nevada, March 1953.A woman shops for a fur coat at Bergdorf Goodman in New York City. Her Chinese pug, Miss Puffet, sits on a nearby chaise, December 1964.Alan Shepard waits to become the first American in space, Cape Canaveral, 1961.A farmer buring the hoof of a horse before shoeing it in Scotland, May 1921.John F Kennedy’s coffin lies in state beneath the Capitol’s dome, November 1963.Londoners seek shelter during WWII in the Aldwych tube station, April 1941.Welts, scars of beauty, pattern the entire back of a Nuba woman in Sudan, 1966.
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