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Archive: 2013 (51 Posts)

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

Caught Our Eyes: Santa Gets Credentials

Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson

Who can appreciate clear skies more than Santa? This 1927 Harris & Ewing photograph documents Santa receiving rather than giving: he gets the “all clear” to navigate the skies on Christmas Eve, complete with a pilot’s license. While a pilot’s license may not be on everyone’s wish list, anyone who has worked with historical photographs …

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

Tales of Football and Italian Americans: Two New Illustrated Books

Posted by: Kristi Finefield

Pictures help tell stories. Two new books published by the Library of Congress are full of hundreds of prints, posters, photographs and other illustrations drawn from the Library’s vast collections. Both books look back over hundreds of years of American history and tell their respective stories with passion – and pictures. Football Nation: Four Hundred …

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

Great Photographs Make You Look Twice

Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson

The following is a guest post by Helena Zinkham, Chief, Prints & Photographs Division. Which photographs do you consider “great”? I’d especially like to hear which images stand out in your mind’s eye, because I was recently challenged to define greatness for a new compilation of more than 700 fascinating pictures that represent the breadth …

Feast Your Eyes: Filling the Holiday Platter

Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson

Tomorrow many households in the U.S. will be celebrating the Thanksgiving holiday. Holidays–particularly food-centered ones–conjure up many personal associations. They also tend to inspire evocative pictures. Turkey in many shapes and forms predominate in the array of images that turn up when you search the Prints & Photographs Online Catalog for “Thanksgiving.” But my family …

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

A Scanning Initiative: Harris & Ewing Collection

Posted by: Kristi Finefield

It’s easy to relate to the first three words in the original caption for this photograph from the Harris & Ewing Collection: Initiative needed here. Whether it’s capturing a larger-than-life subject like the Capitol police officer below, or tackling the scanning and cataloging of thousands of fragile glass negatives, we can all agree that initiative …

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

Sequoyah: A Man of Letters

Posted by: Kristi Finefield

The gentleman with the long pipe and the colorful garments (right) points to a document. What is it? Take a closer look (below). It does not appear to be a letter or excerpt from a text. Some letters are recognizable as part of the Roman alphabet: I can see an A, an H, a J, …