It’s hard not to get wrapped up in vintage photographs — even fairly mundane ones — which are given power simply by their age and which remind us that content and context is often the most intriguing aspects of an image, regardless of when or where they were made.

Head to “Shorpy” delve into the realms of considering what makes an image great or interesting both to you, as well as to learn a whole lot of interesting ideas and historic facts that have nothing to do with photography for photography’s sake. Shorpy is a refreshing reminder to photographers about what photography was originally conceived to accomplish — to capture history (then the present) in a manner that no other media ever had before.

For all is modern zest, photography was and remains a means o record. To share the present with precision. To evoke the past — even of only yesterday’s birthday party — with more power than was ever imaginable. (Although, sure, cave paintings and Renaissance statuary is pretty damn cool.)

At first Shorpy doesn’t seem to come at you with laser-tight focus (not a criticism) and is simply billed, rather broadly as “Best Pix on the Net” and “Always Something Interesting.” But dig in with just a few click and quickly discover that Shorpy is powered by a robust community of photographers and, more important, fans of photography and, more important, fans of vintage images captured before 1940 and, most important, fans of history.

If you want to upload your own vintage images, go for it. Just become a member (for free) and gain easy access to a powerful platform to express your images and ideas about those images. If you simply want to comment on images (not a criticism), you won’t find yourself alone. Shorpy is a rich, friendly, hit-rich community of history buffs and history lovers and lovers of ideas about history — all coming together around photography. Cool.

In a Web 2.0 Word Shopy is a great reminder that as cool as technology is, what’s really most cool what we can do with it. As in: In some ways Shorpy seems a tad retro at first glance, but in all ways it is totally forward thinking, even if the considered thinking relates mostly to the past, which of course relates to the present.

Take yesterday’s post, “Looking the Other Way: 1920.” Part of the caption reads “Washington, D.C., circa 1920. ‘Standard Engraving building, 1212 G Street,’” and points out that this seemingly innocuous view — posted by Dave, who started Shorpy online — is the “other view” of the image in the previous post, “G Street: 1920.” This “Looking” image might put to sleep a modern viewer weaned on images that are visually more aggressive but the straight view is fairly engaging simply because, well, it’s 89 years old and shows a world so different as to be almost surreal to those of us who are not historians, and not often get to peruse such images.

Frankly, interesting or not with its 89 years of age, this view would not hold my attention more than a few seconds and really would not be that interesting were it not for the super active, deeply caring and totally insightful Shorpy community, which has already posted six comments about it. One Shorpy member posts (and transcribes) an announcement related to a building in the image. Cool. This in response to another observation to another commenter. Cool. Someone else comments with another vintage image of a historic fire on G Street. Very cool. Another commenter simply leaves a sweet Shorty-site-related comment relating to the two G Street posts that reads: “Look both ways. . .before crossing Shorpy.” Cool community indded..

An anonymous commenter labels his/her posting “Pre – IPod Amusement” and noting a newspaper reader in the image comments commenting how it “reminds me that whenever the kids today need to amuse themselves while waiting for something it’s always a hand-held video game, listening to their iPod, or texting on their phone. Reading something is so yesterday.”

Whether or not reading something is “so yesterday” or not, it’s hard to argue that Shorpy, which combines photography, history and a rich dialog of comments and interchange of ideas is so very today.

Tags: Blogs, Docmentary Photography, G Street, Historic Photography, Shorpy, Vintage Photography, Washington D.C.