18 Old Photos From a World Lost to Time

Featured 03/11/2022 in feels

There's a Welsh word for the longing or nostalgia one feels for people and places lost to history: Hiraeth. More than your run-of-the-mill nostalgia we all experience, hiraeth refers specifically to a place you can no longer return to. For the Welsh, hiraeth usually calls back to aspects of Welsh culture that have eroded with time.

For those looking to escape into their own sense of hiraeth, we have below a series of photos to transport you to bygone eras -- perhaps times you remember, perhaps times you can never know, but all times that are now long gone.

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1. Gun safety being taught in an Indiana school, 1956
2. Vince Lombardi at the lunch counter, Green Bay, Wisconsin, 1960
3. Debutante Ball. Harlem, early 1960s
4. Four generations in 1920
5. Lineman working on power. Telephone lines at an intersection in Pratt, Kansas, USA, 1911
6. Fashion in 1922
7. Lunch counter in Detroit, Michigan, 1955
8. Gas station, Benton Harbor, Michigan, 1940
9. Actress Julie Harris stops to buy coffee on Broadway, 1952
10. At a high school football game, 1950s
11. A photographer uses his own backdrop to mask Poland’s World War II ruins while shooting a portrait in Warsaw, Poland, 1946
12. Cashiers At The Piggly Wiggly Continental, Los Angeles, California, 1962
13. New York City, 1947, photographed by Stanley Kubrick
14. Traffic on the freeway, Los Angeles, 1965
15. Milk vendor In Amsterdam, Netherlands, 1953
16. A new suburban housing development opens, Lakewood California, 1953
17. Kids playing, lower east side, New York, City, 1963
18. Marion County, Oregon, August 1939

1. Gun safety being taught in an Indiana school, 1956
2. Vince Lombardi at the lunch counter, Green Bay, Wisconsin, 1960
3. Debutante Ball. Harlem, early 1960s
4. Four generations in 1920
5. Lineman working on power. Telephone lines at an intersection in Pratt, Kansas, USA, 1911
6. Fashion in 1922
7. Lunch counter in Detroit, Michigan, 1955
8. Gas station, Benton Harbor, Michigan, 1940
9. Actress Julie Harris stops to buy coffee on Broadway, 1952
10. At a high school football game, 1950s
11. A photographer uses his own backdrop to mask Poland’s World War II ruins while shooting a portrait in Warsaw, Poland, 1946
12. Cashiers At The Piggly Wiggly Continental, Los Angeles, California, 1962
13. New York City, 1947, photographed by Stanley Kubrick
14. Traffic on the freeway, Los Angeles, 1965
15. Milk vendor In Amsterdam, Netherlands, 1953
16. A new suburban housing development opens, Lakewood California, 1953
17. Kids playing, lower east side, New York, City, 1963
18. Marion County, Oregon, August 1939