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Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson
A pair of pictures from the Harris & Ewing Collection caught the eye of Prints & Photographs Division reference technician, Jonathan Eaker. He shared them with the comment, “Really tall cowboy!” I looked at the first picture. On the basis of the length of the chaps, alone, not to mention the interested stares of the …
Posted in: Photographs, Series: Caught Our Eyes
Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson
We mentioned a couple of weeks ago that we’d be playing a game called “What’s My Title?” at the National Book Festival (Sept. 22-23). I can testify that it was wildly successful–and great fun. Hundreds of people stopped by to look at the five popular photographs we mounted on a wall, and many accepted the …
Posted in: Flickr, News & Events, Photographs, Visual literacy
Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson
The Prints & Photographs Division will be on hand at this weekend’s National Book Festival (Sept. 22-23). If you’re planning on attending, please look for us in the LC Pavilion. Our focus will be “reading photographs,” and we’re inviting visitors to participate in a photo captioning game called “What’s My Title?” We’ll be displaying a …
Posted in: News & Events, Photographs, Visual literacy
Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson
Okay. I admit it. I put my children to work this summer. Recently, when doldrums threatened, I asked them to take a look at the Library’s National Child Labor Committee (NCLC) photographs online, choose some they found of interest, and tell me why. Working as an “investigative photographer” for the NCLC between 1908 and 1924, …
Posted in: Flickr, Photographs, Visual literacy
Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson
On Saturday July 28, the Library hosted its first Photography Meetup in the Great Hall of the Thomas Jefferson Building. We invited photography enthusiasts to come and take part in a scavenger hunt guided by a selection of photographs Carol M. Highsmith made for the Library of Congress. The Meetup was a real success, and …
Posted in: Flickr, News & Events, Photographs
Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson
Our online collections support many a research project, but contact with physical photographs and graphic items can be eye-opening and reveal new avenues for investigation. Kya Mangrum, a doctoral candidate in English Language and Literature at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, recently spent several days in the Prints and Photographs Reading Room exploring images of …
Posted in: African American History, News & Events, Photographs, Researcher Stories, Visual literacy
Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson
I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that, in addition to marking the 150th anniversary of key developments in the U.S. Civil War, we are now looking back at an even earlier conflict as the War of 1812 bicentennial launches. Two hundred years to the day have passed since the United States declared war on …
Posted in: Cartoons, Drawings, News & Events, Prints
Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson
This year we’re marking anniversaries of key events in two wars: the U.S. Civil War and the War of 1812 (about which, stay tuned!). At the risk of seeming to be focused on conflict, we’re also looking ahead to the anniversary of what H.G. Wells dubbed “The War That Will End War.” As it turned …
Posted in: News & Events, Photographs, Posters, Prints
Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson
This image, found while browsing for bridges in the Prints & Photographs Online Catalog, lured a colleague in for a closer look. I was glancing over her shoulder, and the photograph drew me in and stirred my curiosity, too. We were struck by the clarity and beautiful geometry of the image, one of the recently …
Posted in: Architecture, Photographs, Series: Caught Our Eyes, Visual literacy