Wire Service Photo

Before the age of digital photography, newspaper wire service companies provided hardcopy photographs to newspapers all over the country. In recent years vast troves of these photos collected for decades in newspaper office file rooms have been sold off. Many depict sideshow, novelty and variety performers. Frequently in the 1920s and 30s newspapers published images of freaks, oddities, and strange performers based on these original photos, which were simply forgotten for many years. These gorgeous, professionally produced artifacts of a previous age are just now floating to the surface to be seen again.