Hudson Bay Company Store Covered with Furs, Churchill, Manitoba, Circa 1906-09
Hudson Bay Company store covered with furs, Churchill, Manitoba, circa 1906-09. Made in 1906-09, it is the kind of image that turns a date in a history book into something you can actually see.
The first years of the twentieth century were an age of confident invention. Powered flight arrived with the Wright brothers in 1903, automobiles were leaving the curiosity stage, and cities were filling with electric light, elevators, and streetcars — all of it documented by a new generation of press photographers.
Pictures of ordinary life are some of the most valuable historical documents we have.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.
