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Posted by: Jeff Bridgers
Today, I celebrate the seasonal transition as we approach, in the Northern Hemisphere, the celestial demarcation from fall to winter, occurring in an imperceptible moment on the winter solstice. Fall’s colorful glory has passed and most hardwood trees stand bare and leafless now. Crops have been harvested and fields lie fallow or marked only with …
Posted in: Prints
Posted by: Jeff Bridgers
At the most fundamental level, signs are a form of visual communication conveying a message through words, graphics, or a combination of the two. Signs’ forms range from traffic signs to billboards, from handbills to the hand-lettered homemade varieties; from simple notices to subtle and sophisticated attempts to sell, promote, or persuade. Today’s blog post …
Posted in: Photographs
Posted by: Jeff Bridgers
The following is a guest post by Gay Colyer, Digital Library Specialist in the Prints and Photographs Division. Not every Northerner who traveled to the Confederacy during the Civil War went to fight. Some journeyed South on a variety of educational and humanitarian missions. After Federal forces seized Beaufort, South Carolina, and the sea islands …
Posted in: Photographs, Prints, Women's History
Posted by: Jeff Bridgers
The title of the 1939 Arthur Rothstein photograph below indicates that the men gathered on this Montrose, Colorado, sidewalk are watching the scoreboard, a blackboard mounted outside the entry of Daily Press Printing. But the two loudspeakers flanking the Daily Press storefront suggest the assembled may also be following a radio broadcast or perhaps very localized play-by-play call from …
Posted in: Photographs
Posted by: Jeff Bridgers
My initial impression of the jovial sailors pictured below was that a letter “d” must have been left out of the annotated title in the photograph’s upper left corner. This World War I era photo from the Bain News Service is one of more than 15,000 photographs (a hefty subset of the 40,000 available from …
Posted in: Flickr, News & Events, Photographs
Posted by: Jeff Bridgers
My ears are caked with dust of oat-fields at harvest-time. I am a deaf man who strains to hear the calls of other harvesters whose throats are also dry. It would be good to hear their songs . . . reapers of the sweet-stalked cane, cutters of the corn . . . even though their …
Posted in: Photographs
Posted by: Jeff Bridgers
What first catches my eyes in Gertrude Käsebier’s 1913 photograph is the streaming sunshine illuminating the interior scene while one bold slant of sunlight has entered the room through the open screen door: Next, as I survey the five people gathered near the open door, the sailor’s attire worn by the four male figures prompts me to wonder: …
Posted in: Photographs, Series: Caught Our Eyes
Posted by: Jeff Bridgers
The instinctual bond between father and daughter is so fundamental that it must be writ deep within us at the level of blood and bone. Below are five photographic portrayals of a father and daughter: three by John Vachon and two by Russell Lee. Four of the five were shot in 1939 during each man’s work for the Farm Security …
Posted in: Photographs
Posted by: Jeff Bridgers
I don’t want a pickle Just want to ride on my motorsickle And I don’t want a tickle ‘Cause I’d rather ride on my motorsickle — Arlo Guthrie, “The Motorcycle Song” Arlo Guthrie’s simple lyrics sum up the appeal of motorcycles which goes far beyond a vehicle for getting from place to place. Both the experience …
Posted in: Photographs