A police officer on the roof of one of New York's schools oversees drug dealers trying to sell drugs to schoolchildren. "These school guards are useless" - said one of the teachers. "Calm yourself can be felt only with real police officers, armed with a real gun and on duty in the corridors of the school. Then I'm no longer a teacher. I overseer.". It is the kind of image that turns a line in a history book into something you can actually see.
Photography has only existed since 1839, which means the camera-recorded past is a narrow window — and every surviving frame from it is a small act of preservation, whether the photographer knew it or not.
Pictures of ordinary life are some of the most valuable historical documents we have. Grand events were always going to be recorded, but a normal day — how people worked, dressed, shopped, and passed the time — survives only when someone happened to point a camera at it.
