August was designated as National Black Business Month in 2004. Just about a century earlier, visitors to the Paris Exposition of 1900 also had an opportunity to appreciate the entrepreneurial endeavors of African Americans. The Exposition included a display devoted to the history and “present conditions” of African Americans. W.E.B. Du Bois and special agent …
The following is a guest post by Micah Messenheimer, Curator of Photography, Prints & Photographs Division. This week’s anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing provides a perfect opportunity to explore our holdings of lunar photography in the Prints & Photographs Division. From the medium’s beginnings, the moon fascinated photographers as both a subject of …
The selection of pictures shared in our latest album posted on the photosharing site, Flickr, made me reflect not only on the strong associations in my own past between summer and corn on the cob, but also how fertile corn’s visual potential is. In fact, corn has traditionally been a symbol of life and fertility, …
The following is a guest post by Hanna Soltys, Reference Librarian, Prints & Photographs Division. “How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you was?” – Leroy “Satchel” Paige. Today marks the birthday of Satchel Paige, one of the greatest baseball players to stand on the pitcher’s mound, and we find some …
The ability to select how I will view a hefty set of search results in the Prints & Photographs Online Catalog is one of the features I love about the catalog. There are three choices: List, Gallery, and Grid, offered at the upper right of the search results page. The default view is List view. …
The following is a guest post by Anne Mitchell, Senior Cataloging Specialist, Prints and Photographs Division. Interested in news-worthy people and events from the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s? Get ready to explore the work of photographer Bernard Gotfryd, who donated his work to the Library of Congress. Copyright restrictions ended in 2016. Now available online …
The following is a guest post by Ryan Brubacher, Reference Librarian, Prints & Photographs Division. One of my most favorite rabbit holes to find myself in as a librarian is the deep and wonderful collection of the combined Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), Historic American Engineering Record (HAER), and Historic American Landscapes Survey (HALS), collectively …
The following is a guest post by Sara W. Duke, Curator of Popular and Applied Graphic Arts, Prints and Photographs Division. “Exceptionally rare and believed to be previously unknown,” in the seller’s letter intrigued me. On offer, an 1836 anti-Martin Van Buren woodcut print, depicting Van Buren as a witch and riding the coattails of …
The following is a guest post by Micah Messenheimer, Curator of Photography, Prints & Photographs Division (and a photographer himself). In honor of Earth Day, we wanted to take a deeper look at some of the Library’s historic collections of landscape photographs. When many people think of landscape photographs they think of wide-open spaces, empty …