The Ainu People of Japan and Eastern Russia, c. 1930

The photograph shows The Ainu people of Japan and eastern Russia, noted for their prolific facial hair, circa 1930. Made around 1930, it is the kind of image that turns a date in a history book into something you can actually see.

The 1930s were shadowed by the Great Depression, which put a quarter of American workers out of a job at its worst point. Yet the same decade produced streamlined trains, record-setting aircraft, grand public works, and a flood of documentary photography as magazines like LIFE sent cameras into everyday America.

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.