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Archive: 2022 (52 Posts)

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 …

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

Toni Frissell Fashion Umbrellas

Posted by: Jan Grenci

A while back I assembled an album for Flickr of images of umbrellas. More recently, I selected color fashion photos taken by Toni Frissell for another album. While gathering the Frissell images, I noticed that umbrellas and parasols appeared with some regularity. In some shots umbrellas shield their holders from the rain while in others …

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 …

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

Ready for Research: Dietrich Hecht collection of Bilderbogen

Posted by: Melissa Lindberg

The following is a guest post by Technical Services Technician Michelle An, with contributions from Technical Services Technician Jenni Orme and Curator of Popular and Applied Graphic Art Sara Duke. All authors work in the Prints & Photographs Division. With 6,000 items, the Dietrich Hecht collection of Bilderbogen (picture sheets) provides a robust cross section …

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

Double Take: Familiar Faces

Posted by: Kristi Finefield

Many entries in the Double Take series, where we look a little closer at images, come out of the steps I take to answer reference questions in my daily work. Recently, in response to a question seeking a photo of a particular building, I was browsing about 300 photographs of Dubuque, Iowa, from the Farm …

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

Foshay Fireworks

Posted by: Jan Grenci

One image from my latest Flickr album on fireworks really caught my eye. It is a 1929 postcard of the dedication of the Foshay Tower in Minneapolis, Minnesota: The three day dedication event in August and September of 1929 included fireworks. When I first saw this postcard, I knew nothing of the Foshay Tower.  Now …

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

The Wonders of the WPA Poster Collection

Posted by: Kristi Finefield

The following is a guest post by Hanna Soltys, Reference Librarian, Prints & Photographs Division. The Work Projects Administration (WPA) Poster Collection is one of the Library’s treasures. We’ve hosted many orientations in person and online about these posters, and this time we’re offering an introduction to the collection during the evening hours! On Thursday, …