Today we take to the air with photographer Carol M. Highsmith and journey up and down the Eastern seaboard. Over the last year, photos of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, New Jersey, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia have come to the Library of Congress to be added to the ever-growing Carol M. Highsmith Archive. Highsmith’s …
Attending county or state fairs in the summer is a tradition for many Americans. While I did not get a chance to go to county or state fairs as a kid, I’ve now been to county fairs on both sides of the country, and find them fascinating. I’ve seen pony rides, clogging demonstrations, chicken, duck …
Fancy, Romance, and Tragedy. They sound like the plot points for a romantic tearjerker, but they are in fact the titles of three drawings recently donated to the Prints and Photographs Division by the family of the artist, George Randolph Barse, Jr. Barse was one of nearly 40 artists and sculptors charged with decorating the …
One of the most enduring traditions of Memorial Day is the decoration of the graves of fallen service members with such items as flowers and American flags. This annual day of commemoration was at one time referred to as Decoration Day because of this practice. My grandmother grew up in the deep South, where tradition …
In the first entry in this occasional series, Profiling Portraits, we examined occupational portraits, a type of portrait designed to tell the viewer a specific fact about the sitter: their occupation. We will now look at another type of portrait, one which is very popular today, thanks to the advent of smartphones with cameras: self-portraits, …