Top of page

Archive: 2014 (52 Posts)

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

Curling: Right on the Button

Posted by: Kristi Finefield

Shot rock. Skip. Tee line. The hammer. If these terms are familiar and you’ve just figured out what it means to throw a guard, peel, and draw to the button, welcome to my quadrennial obsession: Olympic curling. Despite the fact that I’ve never stepped foot on a sheet, thrown a stone and certainly never swept …

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

Feast Your Eyes: Sweets in Store

Posted by: Kristi Finefield

The following is a guest post by Donna Collins, Photo Preservation Specialist, Prints and Photographs Division. On Valentine’s Day, candy and other sweet treats are popular gifts. With this holiday approaching, I browsed the Prints and Photographs collections featuring shops and stands that displayed such confections. The range of tempting locales was as varied as …

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

Caught Our Eyes: A Well Framed Porch

Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson

Reference specialist Jan Grenci pointed out this photo, which Farm Security Administration photographer Carl Mydans took in February 1936. Although February is not a month when people in the mid-Atlantic region generally get to enjoy their porches (as we can testify), Jan noted Carl Mydans’ keen eye for a photographic opportunity: I like the way …

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

Caught Our Eyes: World War I Train

Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson

Reference staff member Jon Eaker spotted this photograph several months ago in the Bain News Service photographs. Jon, who has looked at many a World War I photograph in our holdings, remarked: It may be my favorite of our WWI pictures. This beast symbolizes how the introduction of widespread mechanization changed warfare. It looks like …

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

Feast Your Eyes: Today’s Storage is Tomorrow’s Dinner

Posted by: Kristi Finefield

Today’s Storage is Tomorrow’s Dinner. These words, plastered across a photo of a wide array of fresh and canned fruits and vegetables, opened a 1942 filmstrip created by the U. S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). (If you never had the pleasure of watching educational filmstrips in school, here’s a quick explanation!) Drawing from the vast …

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

Flickr Commons: What’s New!

Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson

The following is a guest post by Helena Zinkham, Chief, Prints & Photographs Division. More than 75 libraries, archives, and museums now participate in the Flickr Commons to make it easy for you to discover and help identify photographs with no known copyright restrictions. The pool of pictures has grown to more than 1.25 million …

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

Caught Our Eyes: A Frosty Morning

Posted by: Kristi Finefield

As I made my way to work in temperatures hovering near zero degrees Fahrenheit, it was hard to think of anything except staying warm. Millions of Americans were bundled up like me, experiencing this week’s shock of unusual Arctic cold. Once I thawed out and could start to think of other things, I recalled this …