By Ben Marks — Bob Seidemann leans on his cane and squints at one of his black-and-white photographs. His white hair, beard, and matching eyeglass frames give him the appearance of an aging hippie saint, or perhaps its friendly ghost. The print he's scrutinizing lies on a table with dozens of others from a portfolio called “The Airplane as Art,” which, in recent years, has brought high-altitude prices at auction—all but one of the images in this article are from that portfolio, and most are being...

Attack of the Vintage Toy Robots! Justin Pinchot on Japan’s Coolest Postwar Export

By Lisa Hix — Everyone is always looking for the next big thing. In the 1960s, it was going into space. In the '40s and '50s, the frontier was technology, with a particular focus on "What's going to make our lives easier?" For the very first time, you had cars with automatic-transmissions, automatic washing machines, and perpetually cooling refrigerators. I mean, we were coming out of an era when you scrubbed your clothes on a washboard and cooled your icebox with a big block of ice. Even the first...