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Archive: October 2011 (6 Posts)

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

A Ghostly Image: Spirit Photographs

Posted by: Kristi Finefield

Can you take a photograph of a ghost? Will a spirit pose for your camera? Looking at “spirit photographs” from the mid-1800s to early-1900s, you might be tempted to answer, “Yes”! Claims of capturing a spirit with the camera lens were made as early as the 1850s, when photography was relatively new to the world.  …

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

World Series Pictures in Play

Posted by: Jeff Bridgers

Fans of the photos we share through the Library of Congress Flickr account have expressed interest recently in the Bain News Service’s coverage of the 1914 World Series which appear in our photostream. It certainly is timely as the World Series starts tonight pitting the St. Louis Cardinals against the Texas Rangers in a best-of-seven …

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

Toward A More Perfect Union: New Civil War Category in the Prints & Photographs Online Catalog

Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson

Explore the faces, places and events of the U.S. Civil War in a single online location, using a new feature in the Prints & Photographs Online Catalog.  The “Civil War” category aids research across thousands of images relating to the Civil War that are found in different Prints & Photographs Division collections in a variety …

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

Let Us Now Praise Famous Photo Albums: Walker Evans’ Albums for Let Us Now Praise Famous Men

Posted by: Jeff Bridgers

During the summer of 1936, Walker Evans, a preeminent photo documentarian of the New Deal, worked with writer James Agee on a project originally intended for Fortune magazine about the devastating effects of economic conditions on white tenant farmers. Agee and Evans spent eight weeks that summer researching their assignment, mainly among three white sharecropping …