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Archive: 2015 (53 Posts)

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

Caught Our Eyes: Frozen Falls

Posted by: Kristi Finefield

Recently, frigid temperatures lingering in parts of the United States have caused a somewhat rare occurrence: the (partial) freezing of Niagara Falls. While water still flows, either visibly or under a frozen shell, sections of the massive falls are covered in ice, to the delight of tourists making the trip to the U.S./Canadian border to …

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

Day of Remembrance: Photographs of Japanese American Internment During World War II

Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson

The following is a guest post by Karen Chittenden, Cataloger, Prints and Photographs Division. On February 19, 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which led to the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. The Executive Order applied to all people of Japanese ancestry, two-thirds of whom were American citizens, forcing nearly …

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

Pictures to Go: Sleeping Car Quarters and Sleeping Car Porters

Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson

One of the wonders of modern transportation that advertisers at the turn of the twentieth century communicated through pictures was the compact luxury of railroad sleeping cars, stressing how they offered the comforts of home and more.​ Often shown as a side feature are the porters who tended to passengers’ needs. African-American sleeping car porters, …

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

Pictures to Go: Express It!

Posted by: Jeff Bridgers

When Barbara Natanson, fellow blogger and head of the reference section here in Prints & Photographs, shared with me the 1910 Lewis Hine photograph [below, left] of the boy assisting with deliveries in St. Louis, it brought home once again how enormously the world has changed in just over a century. In a similar fashion, …