I don’t have any real updates today, (though more goodies are coming soon), but I’ve decided to share a few of my favorite images. After years of running image-related websites and assembling digital collages, I’ve amassed an archive of well over 20,000 images on my computer that I use for inspiration and (depending on copyrights) directly in my designs. Today I’m going to post ten images from my archive, a selected sample that illustrates the kinds of bizarre images currently congesting my hard drive.

This just might be the single most disturbing image I have ever seen. And yet I can’t stop staring at it…
From The Library of Congress.

The wave, as performed by uppity French people.
From a French theater magazine, circa 1905.

Dancing giraffe people
From The Library of Congress.

When I was in 6th grade, a visiting lecturer brought a blackened pig lung to my class as part of an anti-smoking campaign. More than being concerned about cancer and the terrible things smoking does to the lungs, mostly we just wanted to know how the hell they got a pig to smoke. Years later I learned that the pig had probably been shot full of carcinogens and then had its lungs soaked in chemicals, as if this was somehow more humane than giving a cigarette to a pig. At the very least, the pig could have looked cool in front of his pig friends before succumbing to an early death. Just a thought.
Image from The Library of Congress.

"Have a good time, but don’t get gay."
From The Library of Congress, printed in 1899.

An overweight actor in drag.
From a French theater magazine, circa 1902.

These are the ‘before’ guys. Sadly, the photocopier blurred the ‘after’ guy. But I remember that he looked pretty damn smug, unlike the guy on the left here, who looks like he’s about to cry.
From the Saturday Evening Post

Travel to San Francisco by flying fish!
From The California Museum for History, Women and the Arts

OH NOES!!!! A plate is broken! EVERYONE PANIC.
From a French theater magazine, turn of the century.

I presume this image is in reference to a lecture about STDs.
From The Saturday Evening Post.

That is all.
-Sarah