President Lyndon B. Johnson Driving a Amphicar, A, Well

This picture preserves a moment few cameras ever caught — President Lyndon B. Johnson driving a Amphicar, a, well, amphibious car designed to operate on land and sea. Like the best archival images, it needs almost no explanation — the frame tells its own story.

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.

News photographs from this period traveled by wire and print, and a single strong image could shape how millions of people understood an event. This picture is one of the frames that did that work.