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Category: Photographs

Children play baseball on grass field with view of small structure at back left and shadow of hills or mountains in background at right.

Play Ball!

Posted by: Melissa Lindberg

It’s that time of year – baseball season is upon us, and young ball players everywhere are getting geared up for their first spring games. We were not surprised to find that Prints & Photographs Division collections provide many examples of children enjoying America's pastime when searching the online catalog. Enjoy a selection of such images in this post.

Birds-eye view of orange groves, with shadow of mountains just visible in the background.

Pining for Citrus

Posted by: Melissa Lindberg

It’s usually right about this time of year when I start pining for warmer weather and fresh, local fruit. This may have something to do with my California roots. My family always had fruit trees, including varieties of orange, such as the one you see below. There were only a few months out of the …

Double Take: A Tale of Two Oxen

Posted by: Kristi Finefield

One of my favorite ways to explore the vast collections of the Prints & Photographs Division is to look for connections between multiple collections that span different time periods. Quite by accident while searching for another photo in the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, I found this fascinating 1942 photo of a stop …

Image shows cased daguerreotype. Red velvet visible on inside of case, and portrait of Christiana Williams Freeman visible in image on right side, inside gold frame.

Ready for Research: Three Photography Archives

Posted by: Melissa Lindberg

The following is a guest post by Helena Zinkham, Chief, Prints & Photographs Division. The extensive photography archives of Ralph Ellison, Robert McNeill, and Bob Adelman are now ready for your attention! We also offer you a new and detailed finding aid to the Tobacco Cards from the Benjamin K. Edwards Collection and more rights-free …

Material Matters | Considering the Tintype

Posted by: Kate Fogle

In this age of born-digital photography, the tintype is a curiosity for many. A photograph on metal may seem lightyears away from the bits and bytes that make up a contemporary digital image. But in its time, the tintype—a version of the wet collodion process—allowed photographs to be produced efficiently and in a matter of …

The West and Midwest: Newly Added Photos from Carol M. Highsmith

Posted by: Kristi Finefield

Contemporary photographer Carol M. Highsmith’s decades-long project to document the entire United States sent her touring the Midwest and West during the last few years. Some of the states Highsmith photographed are: Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Utah, Nebraska, and both North and South Dakota. Thousands of those photos are now available in the Prints & Photographs …

The First Three

Posted by: Jan Grenci

My latest Flickr album – Sweet 16 – A Golden Birthday for Flickr Commons – celebrated the 16th birthday of the Flickr Commons. When I was looking for images for the Flickr album, the photo below showed up in my search results, as the caption tells us that the bus made sixteen round trips daily: …

New Year Greetings from Photographer Frances Benjamin Johnston

Posted by: Kristi Finefield

“Greetings and Hearty Good Wishes for the New Year from Frances Benjamin Johnston” reads this combination business card, greeting card, and 1904 calendar from photographer Frances Benjamin Johnston. In 1904, Johnston was thirty years old, had a home photo studio in Washington, D.C., at 1332 V Street, and was already well-established in the capital city. …