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Posted by: Kristi Finefield
In this newest installment in the occasional series, Profiling Portraits, we take a look at the type of portraits taken when the subject wishes to avoid the camera! Few smiles appear, mostly scowls or attempts to hide. Just like in modern times, news photographers decades ago sought their subjects with dogged determination. The photos of …
Posted in: Photographs, Series: Profiling Portraits
Posted by: Kristi Finefield
In his November 1933 proposal to create the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) in partnership with the Library of Congress and the American Institute of Architects, the National Park Service’s Charles E. Peterson sounded this call to action: “Our architectural heritage of buildings from the last four centuries diminishes daily at an alarming rate. The …
Posted in: Architecture, Drawings, Photographs
Posted by: Kristi Finefield
Many of those around the world watching news coverage of the terrible fire at Notre-Dame in Paris likely either reflected on a visit to the cathedral in their lifetime or felt a pang of regret at having not made it there before the fire. I personally thought back on my trip to Notre Dame as …
Posted in: Architecture, Drawings, Photographs, Prints
Posted by: Kristi Finefield
In this installment of Double Take, the blog series where we take a much closer look at images in our collections, we dig a little deeper into the story behind the photo below, featuring a truck – and a trunk! – of unusual design: The White House is in the background, so I know we …
Posted in: Photographs, Series: Double Take, Visual literacy
Posted by: Kristi Finefield
Details about the life of Irish American photographer Timothy O’Sullivan are sparse. He was either born in New York or emigrated with his parents at the age of 2 from Ireland in 1842. He died at the age of 42 from tuberculosis. He left few documents in his own hand, but the photographs he took …
Posted in: Photographs
Posted by: Kristi Finefield
The following is a guest post by exhibition co-curators Katherine Blood, Curator of Fine Prints, and Martha H. Kennedy, Curator of Popular & Applied Graphic Art, Prints & Photographs Division. A new Library of Congress exhibition, “Art in Action: Herblock and Fellow Artists Respond to Their Times,” features selections from the Library’s signature collection of …
Posted by: Kristi Finefield
In this latest entry in our occasional series, Profiling Portraits, I was inspired by an attempt to take a group photo during a recent family visit, as well as time spent looking through photo albums at previous years’ similar efforts. Family photos tend to evoke memories, elicit questions about older ancestors and of course provide …
Posted in: Photographs, Portraits, Series: Profiling Portraits