This picture preserves a moment few cameras ever caught — Mob Moll, 1944: She stands by her man! 19-year-old Virgina Ornmark looks unfazed as she and beau Fred Schmidt, 24, stare blankly at the camera after being arraigned for the murder of a lingerie merchant in 1944. It was taken in 1944, and like the best archival images it needs almost no explanation — the frame tells its own story.
The first half of the 1940s was consumed by the Second World War, the largest conflict in human history, and photography went to war with it — small 35mm cameras and wire services meant pictures from the front could reach newspaper readers within days.
Most photography of the period chased celebrities and headlines, which makes surviving images of daily routine all the more precious. This is what the world actually looked like when nobody thought it was worth remembering.
