Flower Power! a Fashion Model Wears a Teeny, 1968

The photograph shows Flower power! A fashion model wears a teeny, daisy-encrusted bikini in June 1968. Gunnar Larsen/New York Daily News. It was taken in 1968, and like the best archival images it needs almost no explanation — the frame tells its own story.

The 1960s moved fast: the space race put satellites and then astronauts overhead, television replaced print as the main source of news, and social change swept through music, fashion, and politics. Photojournalism was at its peak, with picture magazines and newspapers employing armies of photographers.

What makes everyday photographs like this one compelling is the details at the edges: the clothes, the signs, the tools, the postures. They preserve texture that history books flatten out.