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Archive: 2022 (19 Posts)

Photo of double rainbow taken over desert landscape in Arizona along historic Route 66.

Caught Our Eyes: Capturing Rainbows

Posted by: Melissa Lindberg

I recently came across this photograph when perusing some images from the Carol M. Highsmith Collection, and, hailing from the American West, I was cheered by its familiar landscape – not to mention the symmetry of the rainbow. As the title of the image indicates, the hint of a second rainbow is visible above the …

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

Ready for Research: Mission Gráfica/La Raza Collection

Posted by: Melissa Lindberg

The following guest post is by Maggie McCready, Archivist in the Prints & Photographs Division. A collection of nearly 1,200 prints and posters by 265 different artists is now online at the Library of Congress.  This artwork represents 40 years’ worth of culture, printmaking, and protest based in the San Francisco Bay area. Let me …

Naja working with images related to Japanese American incarceration during World War II. Photo by Naja Morris, 2022.

Adding Details to Improve Access

Posted by: Melissa Lindberg

The following is an interview with Naja Morris, the Prints & Photographs Division’s current Archives, History and Heritage Advanced (AHHA) intern. Melissa: Can you tell us a little bit about your background and how you came to intern in the Prints & Photographs Division? Naja: I went to Mississippi State University as an undergraduate where …

Soldiers with cannon on small railroad car.

Revisiting Rights-Free: U.S. Civil War Images

Posted by: Melissa Lindberg

The Prints & Photographs Division’s U.S. Civil War collections are impressive, spanning a number of collections. Our core bodies of material related to the Civil War are conveniently featured in one place in the Prints & Photographs Online Catalog. Probably the best known collection of Civil War material in the division consists of original glass …

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

Mapping Anthony Angel’s Photographs of Manhattan

Posted by: Melissa Lindberg

Photographer Angelo Antonio Rizzuto – or Anthony Angel, as he called himself –  captured a variety of people, structures, and places in Manhattan over the eighteen-year period from 1949 through 1967. Collectively, the thousands of images by Angel in the Prints & Photographs Division offer a window into life and the built environment in a …

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

Unlocking the Color: Photographs by Sergei M. Prokudin-Gorskii, 1909 to 1915

Posted by: Melissa Lindberg

The following interview with photographer Walt Frankhauser is a guest post by Helena Zinkham, Chief of the Prints & Photographs Division. Back in 1948, the Library of Congress acquired close to 2,000 rare glass-plate negatives created by the Russian photographer Sergei M. Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944). We knew that what appeared to be black-and-white images could be …

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

50 Years Later: How Photographs Influenced a Career

Posted by: Melissa Lindberg

In the following guest post, Prints & Photographs Division Senior Cataloging Specialist Kara Chittenden interviews National Public Radio reporter Joseph Shapiro. Joseph Shapiro is an investigative reporter for National Public Radio. When he was a teenager living in Washington, D.C., he was intrigued by the photographs in the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Photograph …

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

Exploring Fact and Fiction in Civil War Imagery

Posted by: Melissa Lindberg

The following is a guest post by Paloma Ronis von Helms, Prints & Photographs Division Stanford in Government Liljenquist Fellow. As this year’s Summer Liljenquist Fellow in the Prints & Photographs Division at the Library of Congress, I reviewed ambrotype and tintype images, carte de visite photographs, lithographs, and other formats depicting soldiers and battlefield …

Through the Lens of Laura Gilpin

Posted by: Melissa Lindberg

Join Curator of Photography Micah Messenheimer this Thursday, August 4, for a presentation on the landscape work of acclaimed 20th century photographer Laura Gilpin in the collections of the Prints & Photographs Division. The talk will highlight Gilpin’s craft, stylistic changes, and the range of sites, subjects, and people she photographed in the 1920s and …