Claire O'Neill

This post is a Special Research Project of NPR History Dept.

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Between November 1975 and September 1976, a man named Roy Colmer decided to photograph New York City's doors. Not all of New York City's doors. No doors in particular. And in no real particular order. But ...

We set up a portrait studio at an event for homeless veterans — and asked them to pick which photo they liked. Meet nine of the veterans we photographed, and look at how they want to be seen.

We've all heard the arguments that our lives have become irrevocably mediated by screens and camera phones — that the more we document and publish moments, the less we actually live them. So when Elise Hu over at All Tech Considered got a Narrative Clip in the mail, I ...

This week, NPR's Scott Simon and photographer Mike Mitchell visited the site where Mitchell shot a historic evening 50 years ago. Hear their conversation at the audio link.

Now a humble parking lot, the Washington Coliseum has seen a lot in its days. Malcolm X once spoke there, circus lions ...

What do the objects we keep say about us? Which things, if any, are the ones we wouldn't want to live without?

In December, for our ongoing community "Public Square" photo project with KPCC, we asked you to photograph and share some of your favorite things ...

We get a lot of press releases about photo contests, but this winning image from the Olympus BioScapes Imaging Competition (which I didn't even know existed) stood out for a few reasons:

1. The image itself is really neat.

2. What's actually happening in the image is also ...

You've probably never heard of painter Fred F. Scherer. If you've ever been to the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York City, though, you may have seen his paintings — probably without realizing it.

Scherer died at age 98 a few weeks ago. His art — those ...

In a certain region of the Missouri Ozarks called Devil's Promenade, there are tales of a "spook light." According to local accounts, it's a mysterious orb-like light that appears in the woods — but only on chance nights. And, as many local legends are, this one is shrouded in mystery: ...

Last month we launched our new "Public Square" series with KPCC and asked you to share photos of hard work on Instagram. This month: Location location location. Tell us a story that starts with: This is where ...

It could be anything — the place where ...

Somewhere in my parents' house, I think I still have a corsage from some dance in high school. A little rose on a sparkly elastic band, which I wore awkwardly around my wrist. You know the drill.

In Texas, though, they have a different drill. Photographer Nancy Newberry ...

Before spending time in Burkina Faso in western Africa, photographer David Pace had his own preconceptions:

"There's really nothing there," he says he thought. "It's like the worst tourist destination ever."

And, of course, he adds, "all of my original conceptions were totally wrong."

It may be true ...

Sure, color film existed in 1963. And sure, there are probably color photos of this day in history. But the vast majority of the imagery we're used to seeing is black-and-white — such as, for example, the digitized photos in the Library of Congress (LOC).

But what if ...

Earlier this month we launched our new Instagram project with KPCC called "Public Square": We make the assignment, you take the photos! Our first theme was "Hard Work." The task: Find someone with a thankless job, take a portrait and tag it #PSHardWork. Here are a ...

I cannot begin to fathom the number of snapshots that have been produced between the first Kodak camera (circa 1888) and now. Let alone how anyone could begin paring it down into a collection.

And yet for years, Seattle-based businessman Robert E. Jackson has been sifting through discarded memories, searching ...

Photographer Kirk Crippens says you can't. But that hasn't stopped him from trying. Since 2009, he has been documenting the city of Stockton, Calif., which last year became the largest city in American history to file for bankruptcy — until Detroit filed yesterday. Before bankruptcy, Stockton was the epicenter ...

It's exactly what it sounds like.

"I wish I could tell you there was some really profound reasoning," says curator Sasha Wolf, owner of the eponymous gallery.

But, as good ideas often do, this one came over a glass of bourbon, as Wolf was brainstorming summer show ideas.

...

There's no easy way to portray the scope of Camilo Jose Vergara's photos with photos. To do so would require processing "many hundreds of thousands" of images (the estimate he once gave me) that document several cities over several decades. It's overwhelming.

The best (and perhaps the only) way to ...

It's hard to say where the the 287-mile stretch of Nevada's Route 50 got its nickname "the loneliest road in America." Photographer Ty Wright thinks some writer got clever in a Life article once upon a time — and that it just stuck.

But when he set out ...

As if "supermoon" isn't cool enough, the technical term for the moon when it's closest to the Earth is: perigee-syzygy.

It happens about once a year, and this year it fell on June 23, though the day prior wasn't bad, either. According to NASA, this year's supermoon was ...