Top of page

Search results for: harris ewing mystery flickr

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

Mystery Gadgets Galore!

Posted by: Kristi Finefield

Attention all who are curious about gadgets, inventions, science, technology, and a good old-fashioned mystery! This week will offer two opportunities to explore mysterious thingamabobs and whatchamacallits and perhaps give them their real names. Within the Harris & Ewing Photograph Collection, we have a number of uncaptioned photographs that feature “gadgets” of unknown purpose – …

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

Posing (and Solving) Mysteries: Harris & Ewing Photographs Invite Detective Work

Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson

I’m constantly amazed and amused by photographs from the Harris & Ewing Collection and the range in the information that came with them, from the sublimely detailed–full of names and dates–to the barer-than-bare bones: no caption at all. Here’s an example that intrigues me, particularly with the model wagon(?) beside her on the desk. Though …

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

Caught Our Eyes: A Wintry Mystery

Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson

Okay, I admit it. California-born and raised, I begin to shiver when the temperature dips much below 40 degrees, as it has this past week in Washington, D.C. That’s probably why my eye was drawn to this photo, which reference librarian Jon Eaker added to our “Caught Our Eyes” staff sharing wall. Although it eloquently …

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

“What’s this Gadget?”: Solving Mystery Photos

Posted by: Kristi Finefield

We asked “What’s this Gadget?” about a set of twenty-five uncaptioned photographs from the Harris & Ewing Collection, and you definitely put on your thinking caps – or maybe your psychographs – which we learned the smiling woman below is “wearing”! This previously uncaptioned photograph shows a psychograph, a phrenology machine meant to measure the …

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

“What’s this Gadget?”: More Mystery Photos

Posted by: Kristi Finefield

If you enjoy a good mystery, get ready to start sleuthing! This Friday, we will be adding a new group of mystery photos to the Library of Congress Flickr account. A portion of the glass negatives in the Harris & Ewing Collection came to us with no captions, providing many challenging photo mysteries to solve. …

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

“What’s the Story?”: Solving Mystery Photos

Posted by: Kristi Finefield

We asked “What’s the Story?” – and the answers came rolling in! Two months ago, we added twenty photographic puzzlers from the Harris & Ewing collection to the Library’s Flickr account with the (we hoped) tantalizing headline of “Mystery Photos – What’s the Story?” The corresponding glass negatives for these photos came to us without …

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

Gadgets in Images: Obvious or Mysterious?

Posted by: Melissa Lindberg

Barbara Natanson, Head of the Prints & Photographs Reading Room, recently searched the Prints & Photographs Online Catalog for “gadgets” and shared one of the images that appeared in the results – this photograph by Russell Lee likely taken at the Gonzales County Fair in Texas in 1939. Lee did not, or perhaps could not, …