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Posted by: Kristi Finefield
As Women’s History Month draws to a close, I was inspired to look back at the archives of the Picture This blog and to note the many ways we have celebrated the contributions of women in history. We have written posts about women making their mark, such as Shirley Chisholm and Amelia Earhart. And we …
Posted in: Photographs, Prints, Women's History
Posted by: Melissa Lindberg
Shirley Chisholm laid the groundwork for many who would follow her footsteps into national politics. As an activist who was often in the public eye, she is well represented in Prints & Photographs Division collections. Elected as a Representative for New York’s 12th congressional district in 1968, Chisholm was the first Black woman to serve …
Posted in: African American History, Photographs, Posters, Women's History
Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson
How have women and automobiles been depicted together? The image I conjured in my mind’s eye involved attractive women draped across a car in a purely decorative fashion–something like the image below, where the finer features of the bathing beauties are more on view than the Columbia Six Sport they are presumably helping to advertise. …
Posted in: Prints, Women's History
Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson
I admire this photograph of Althea Gibson—and the notable woman it depicts–for several reasons. A news photo from our New York World-Telegram & Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection, it shows Gibson at a tennis clinic reportedly attended by 500 students at Midwood High School. Tennis racket in hand, index finger extended, Gibson is literally giving pointers to …
Posted in: African American History, Photographs
Posted by: Jeff Bridgers
A new biographical essay about photographer Ann Rosener (1914-2012) sheds light on her wartime work as she focused on the contributions of women workers and other aspects of the World War II home front. In the early 1940s Rosener documented preparations for war and home front activities for the Farm Security Administration (FSA) by contributing …
Posted in: Photographs, Women's History
Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson
We are still savoring the comments visitors to the National Book Festival offered last fall while viewing sample photographs from our collections. This visitor’s comments seem particularly apt as we continue to celebrate Women’s History Month. The commenter recognized the well-known subject of the photograph, educator and civil rights activist Mary McLeod Bethune. Bethune served …
Posted in: African American History, News & Events, Photographs
Posted by: Jeff Bridgers
For Leap Day 2012, Prints & Photographs proudly presents an 1896 circus poster for Adam Forepaugh & Sells Brothers Enormous Shows Combined which promotes the Leap Year Ladies of Laughter. As “the only clown women who wear the comic crown,” these alliterative ladies are said to have a comedic touch as “variable as the shade …
Posted in: Posters
Posted by: Kristi Finefield
See chromolithographic illustrations of fashion designs for men, women and children through advertisements produced by dressmakers and tailoring companies from the 1880s and 1890s.
Posted in: Prints
Posted by: Kristi Finefield
If you are in the D.C. area, please join us on Thursday, March 16, to celebrate Women’s History Month with Women in Photography, Stories from the Not an Ostrich Exhibition, from 6 to 8 p.m., in the Library of Congress Thomas Jefferson Building. Photojournalist Sharon Farmer, the first woman and the first African American to be director …
Posted in: Exhibitions, News & Events, Photographs, Women's History