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Archive: April 2017 (4 Posts)

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

C. M. Bell Studio Collection: Newly Digitized Portraits

Posted by: Kristi Finefield

“…the great success of Mr. Bell is due to his suavity of manner coupled with high artistic ability, and to the gentlemanly deportment observed by his corps of assistants. The rule is, politeness to everybody.” –Photographic Times and American Photographer, Sept. 1, 1883. From the 1870s until the 1910s, tens of thousands of people in …

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

Witness to History: Civil War Photographs

Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson

Last month’s offering in this series of posts about documentary and photojournalism collections noted how the Crimean War posed an opportunity—and enormous challenges—to British photographer Roger Fenton. Just six years later, a conflict on American soil, likewise, fueled Mathew Brady’s entrepreneurial ambitions, leading to some of the best known photographic documentation of the Civil War. …

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

Caught Our Eyes: It’s Electric!

Posted by: Julie Stoner

I am the first to admit that my knowledge of cars is rather limited. And perhaps like me, you thought electric cars were a relatively new phenomenon. Imagine my surprise when I stumbled across the 1919 photograph below of a car being charged! Much to my astonishment, the first practical electric car was invented in …

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

Artists Capture the Hell Gate Bridge

Posted by: Kristi Finefield

One month ago, a blog post in Picture This featured photos of New York’s Hell Gate Bridge, marking the centennial of its dedication. Today, I turn my attention to prints and drawings of the Hell Gate in our holdings. These drawings and etchings enable us to look at the bridge through an artist’s eyes. American …