Nothing is ever really new, but as our world evolves and advances at breakneck speed, it’s always enjoyable, necessary even, to stop and take a look back at how far we’ve come. Sifting through Alamy’s archival images, and comparing them with today’s photos of similar subjects, we can see just how trends have changed over the years.
Nostalgia is a powerful emotion, and archival images allow us to tap into this. They document eras that many people hold dear, allowing us to relive our childhood memories and connect to simpler times.
Once we get to adulthood, we all share some kind of nostalgia for times gone by, and this desire for looking back is easier than ever to come by, with the growing social media trends for sharing and comparing photos and UGC content of the things we did, places we went to, and the lives we lived in our earlier days.
So come with us as we explore some of our favourite recent trends and discover what these looked like in the past. Who knows, it may even unlock some of your long-lost memories!
Road Trips
In the 1910s and 1920s, Henry Ford’s new way of manufacturing large numbers of vehicles on moving assembly lines enabled increased accessibility and affordability of automobiles. Combined with the improvement of the roads this sparked the ‘auto camping’ craze, along with a few high-profile road trip pioneers who led the way.
Production of the Ford T in Detroit, 1913
In 1921, president Warren G. Harding drove a fleet of cars out to Western Maryland and dined in the wilderness with a group of ‘Vagabonds’, a party which included Thomas Edison and of course Henry Ford. They had, since 1914, spent every summer exploring the country in a convoy of cars.
U.S. President Warren G. Harding and Harvey S. Firestone, founder of Firestone Tire & Rubber Company, reading newspapers on a camping trip in Maryland in 1921.
So, for a few short years ‘auto camping’ was all the rage, and with more and more Americans owning cars they were enjoying this new feeling of freedom, escaping real life, responsibility and the growing cities. This era would pave the way for the road trips we still enjoy today, and auto camps were the very first incarnation of motels and RVs.
In a recent poll of US drivers conducted by Michelin, it was discovered that nearly three-quarters of Americans would rather drive to their holiday destination than fly, and that the best elements of a road trip includes listening to music, enjoying the feeling of driving, and experiencing new landscapes.
Explore the evolution of the road trip here, and jump back into today’s modern road trips here.
Cowboy Core
Even before the release of Beyonce’s 2024 album Cowboy Carter, ‘western aesthetic’ was gaining momentum — after all it’s a trend which is never really off the radar. Rather than undergoing a revival, western wear is a timeless aesthetic, with its roots embedded in the functional garments designed to withstand the hardships of frontier life.
Despite there being many untold stories of Black and Hispanic cowboys, it was the rise of Hollywood and the popularity of Western films in the 1930s which first shifted western wear from being purely functional and exclusively worn by cowboys, to a trend followed by the rest of America. By the 1950s, cowboys were inescapable, with the number of Western films being produced outnumbering all other genres combined.
In the 1970s it was pop stars who popularised the look, with performers like Dolly Parton and Elton John blending Western wear elements with glamour and alternative fashion, resulting in over-the-top stage costumes.
In the 1980s and 1990s, big brands such as Ralph Lauren were designing clothes inspired by this style, often featuring fringes, denim and leather.
Explore the enduring cowboy aesthetic here and get up to date with today’s obsession with cowboy core here.
Vitamin Sea
In Britain, taking a trip to the seaside first became popular with the wealthy in the Georgian era when swimming in the sea was recommended for health reasons, but this pastime started to boom in late-Victorian times. The construction of the railways in the 1900s made journeys more affordable and travelling by train meant that certain destinations could be reached in a much shorter time than any horse-drawn coach. Once bank holidays were introduced in 1871, the working classes could take a day trip to the beach, if they could afford it.
Our predecessors from the 1800s to the 1930s were well-known for their strict moral codes and respect of the traditional, and the stifling formalities of these generations is plain to see when we look at images of fully dressed and formally clothed families spending time at the beach. Even so, Punch and Judy shows became so popular as a seaside attraction that by the second half of the 1800s, authorities had to restrict when and where shows could be held due to the rowdy behaviour of the spectators!
The golden age of British seaside resorts came between The First and Second World War, when thousands of holidaymakers would descend on the beaches of Blackpool and Brighton. The Holiday Pay Act of 1938 meant that most workers could now afford seaside holidays, and many industrial towns had local ‘holiday weeks’ when the local factory would close and all the workers would take their annual leave at the same time.
British Holidays - London. 1951
It’s no secret that the health and wellbeing benefits from the sea are next to none. Taking in the sea air has been known to aid with ailments since the Georgian era and is still acknowledged as an effective way of helping mental and physical healing today.
Reminisce at sea side family holidays gone by here, and explore more modern waters here
Portraiture
In 1839, the art of portraiture was changed forever when photography was invented. Not only did it start to replace painted portrait miniatures, but it also made portraiture more widely accessible.
As technology advanced and the popularity of portraiture grew, calling cards known as carte-de-visite became the first mass-produced type of photo, and during the mid- to late-1800s they were commissioned, collected and traded in their thousands.
At this point, photography was seen as a purely functional way of recording reality. In addition to the calling cards, photography had for the first time, been utilized as a way of identifying criminals.
In response to this, the Pictorialism Movement began. This group sought to shift the idea that photography was not an artistic outlet, and that the photographer’s vision and creativity was integral to the photographic process.
The competing perspective was Naturalistic Photography, whose most notable proponent was Peter Henry Emerson. His school of thought was committed to illustrating objective reality with unaltered images. Both these views are still relevant and have influenced countless generations of photographers to this day.
Whether we agree on one side or the other, or a mixture of both stances, it’s clear that even in the most of basic forms, all portraits show an aspect of creativity which reveals something about the era in which they were taken, from the lighting used to the attire of the sitter.
Explore our nostalgia portraits collection here, and discover here how high concept portraiture uses pure creativity to evoke abstract ideas.
Food
Food and photography have been inextricably linked since almost the invention of photography itself, with William Henry Fox Talbot taking one of the first ever images of food, a still life of a table laden with fruit.
A Fruit Piece, William Henry Fox Talbot. 1845.
As illustrated in Talbot’s image, food photography was initially significantly influenced by still life paintings, with many images featuring classically composed fruit. It wasn’t until the 1920s that the photography of food started to move away from using this style of composition, and with the introduction of colour advertising in the 1930s, aesthetics really began to shift.
In order to look appealing under hard studio lights, photographers and food stylists were forced to come up with ingenious ways of presenting the ‘food’. Techniques included using glue in place of milk, soap bubbles for beer foam and polishing pastries.
In the 1990s, food photography adopted a more natural approach, with over-the-top glamourous shots replaced by more palatable documentary type imagery, and cookbooks were like photobooks. These illustrated an aspirational lifestyle, with place settings and kitchenware also becoming important features within the images.
And then of course came the food blogs and Instagram, which turned everyone into food photographers. Whether you’re a serial brunch snapper or not, our undeniable obsession with food photography serves to exemplify our love of sharing food experiences, which really is no surprise since eating is one of our most sociable and shared experiences as human beings.
You can read more about the history of food photography here, and dig in to our nostalgia food collection here, before feasting your eyes on a more recent food trend here with our plant based collection.
We hope you’ve enjoyed this journey through time, between trends past and present. Visit our extensive archival collections for more historical content, and our Fresh Picks page for today’s freshest content!