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Category: Visual literacy

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 …

Parishoners [sic] of St. Thomas Church resting after spending many hours preparing food for a benefit picnic supper. Near Bardstown, Kentucky. Photo by Marion Post Wolcott, 1940. http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/fsa.8a43010

A Different Wrinkle: Representation of Older Women in P&P Collections

Posted by: Melissa Lindberg

The following is a guest post by Barbara Orbach Natanson, former Reference Section Head, Prints & Photographs Division. Being a woman of a certain age myself, I recently began to wonder how and where older women are depicted in Prints & Photographs Division collections. Naturally, even in embarking on such an exploration, one has to …

Smiling woman dressed in outdoor winter clothes holds a large, old-style camera

The Changing Face of Washington, D.C. in the U.S News & World Report Magazine Photo Collection

Posted by: Kristi Finefield

One of the most fascinating and enjoyable aspects of research with visual materials is the wide variety of information you can learn from a single image, from the obvious to the unexpected.  A photographic portrait, for example, has a primary job of showing you what someone looks like. But beyond that, you could learn about …

Pointing North in the Historic American Buildings Survey Collection

Posted by: Kristi Finefield

What do a carousel horse, Theodore Roosevelt, and a lighthouse have in common? Look closely at the drawing below from the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) of the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial – can you spot two Roosevelts? There is, of course, the large drawing of the Roosevelt statue featured at the memorial on Theodore Roosevelt …