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Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson
From my earliest days of coloring school worksheets, cornucopias are the symbol I associate with the harvest season and the Thanksgiving holiday many Americans will be celebrating this week. Also known as the “horn of plenty,” the typical representation features vegetables and fruits spilling forth in abundance. In searching the Prints & Photographs Online Catalog, …
Posted in: Drawings, Photographs
Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson
The following is a guest post by Beverly Brannan, Curator of Photography, Prints and Photographs Division. When I read For Whom the Bell Tolls in my junior year of high school, it was just the most romantic thing I had ever come across, and I fell in love with the thought of fighting for one’s …
Posted in: News & Events, Photographs
Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson
What do bookplates tell us about book owners for whom they were designed? The small labels (also known as “ex libris”) were intended to be pasted inside an individual’s books to connect the book with its owner. But what other connections regarding the owner’s personal traits or interests might they reveal? Recently, we created an …
Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson
The following is a guest post by Helena Zinkham, Chief, Prints & Photographs Division. When the elegant Hispanic Reading Room opened in October 1939, its closest neighbor at the Library of Congress was the Division of Fine Arts, known today as the Prints & Photographs Division. Over the last 75 years, we have enjoyed collaborating …
Posted in: Hispanic American History, Prints
Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson
The following is a guest post by Verna Curtis, Curator of Photography, Prints and Photographs Division. Imagine how people understood photographs in 1900, when photography had been around for just over sixty years. Were photographs factual documents? Could they be a new form of artistic expression? Those producing photographic prints knew, but the public was …
Posted in: News & Events, Photographs
Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson
This year’s anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 has offered occasion to pause and reflect on the injustices the legislation was meant to address, the actions that called attention to those injustices, and the continued struggle to see legislative ideals become everyday reality. Last week we added a new “album” to the Library …
Posted in: African American History, Flickr, News & Events, Photographs
Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson
My colleagues and I had a wonderful time talking with visitors to our table at the National Book Festival last Saturday. We brought copies of some of our favorite photographs, prints, and drawings, focusing on those for which we knew at least a piece of the story behind them. And we literally put the story …
Posted in: News & Events, Photographs
Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson
The following is a guest post by Sara W. Duke, Curator of Popular & Applied Graphic Arts, Prints & Photographs Division. The Library of Congress has long collected cartoon art and illustration, including editorial cartoon and comic strip drawings. In the last fifteen years, we’ve expanded the scope to include original drawings for alternative comics, …
Posted in: Drawings, News & Events, Prints
Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson
When I refile pictures that researchers have recently been consulting, I’m almost guaranteed to run across at least one that demands a second look. My first thought upon seeing this picture, which was copyrighted in 1920, was: How frightening would it have been to be on the streets of Portland, Oregon, when these airplanes swooped …
Posted in: Photographs, Series: Caught Our Eyes