Newest Portraits

To be a poor immigrant in mid-nineteenth century New York was to be a creature almost entirely at the mercy of mammoth social forces and fickle chance. Immigration from Ireland in the wake of the Potato Famine and from Germany following the unrest of 1848 had packed the city with more men and women than there were jobs or apartments to sustain them, a positive boon for industrialists who found that they could reduce wages to near starvation levels and still have plenty of wil

On August 29, 1971, a 59 year old Greek woman who was beloved throughout Athens for the lengths she had gone to during World War II to aid the Resistance against the Nazis and protect Jews, foreign officers, and conscientious objectors from prison and execution, was arrested by her own country’s government and accused of treason against the state. It was not her first time being arrested - the Nazis had kept her in prison for six months in 1944 with the constant threat of exe

The Virginia of 1943 was a land of deep divides, and none so stark as that which separated the Black and White populations of the state. Though the Civil War had ended some eight decades prior, and Black individuals were proudly serving and dying for their country in the fight against the Axis powers, it was still overwhelmingly the case that the quality of your life on a material, medical, educational, and social level was entirely determined by the color of your skin at bir

For most, their pantheon of nursing reformers from the 19th century is a list containing precisely two people: Florence Nightingale, whose superhuman efforts during the Crimean War translated into a drive in England to make nursing a respectable occupation for middle class women, and Clara Barton, whose equally driven work during the American Civil War ultimately culminated in the creation of the American Red Cross. And certainly, these figures are both foundational, but the

Being a bug is a chancy thing. From the moment your egg is laid, you are the target of a vast array of predators hungry for your gushy, nutritive innards. Chances are, you will never make it out of your egg, as hosts of other insects either eat you directly or scoop you out to make room for their own babies to grow in the resources prepared by your mother. Out of a hundred eggs laid, it is a good day if a few dozen occupants make their way out, hopelessly, ludicrously exposed