This guest post by Katherine Blood, Curator of Fine Prints, Prints & Photographs Division, highlights posters that complement the New York Poster House exhibition “The Letterpress Posters of Amos Kennedy” (October 8, 2020–January 3, 2021), curated by Angelina Lippert. Detroit-based letterpress artist Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr. wields wood type and ink in ways that can …
We asked reference librarian Jon Eaker, who has spent many years exploring our holdings of military images, to select a couple of favorites to feature in honor of Veterans Day. It’s a tall order to pick out just two, given the thousands of images we hold of members of the armed forces depicted in peacetime …
The following is a guest post by Victoria Bankole, an Archives, History, and Heritage Advanced Intern in the Prints & Photographs Division in spring 2020. “Every story I create, creates me. I write to create myself.” — Octavia E. Butler Just as author Octavia Butler created herself through writing, photographers such as Roland Freeman use their …
Juneteenth celebrates the emancipation of enslaved African Americans. One way to commemorate this anniversary might be to explore the online collection Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936-1938. More than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of formerly enslaved people are available online. These narratives were collected in …
My images throughout time give glimpses into poverty, segregation, and perseverance in cities throughout America during the past half century. They are part of an evolving historical record, contributing stories of resilience and pride … Camilo J. Vergara has been photographing low-income, racially segregated neighborhoods in American cities since the 1970s. Earlier this year, the …
Below is an interview with Elizabeth Lindqwister, the summer 2019 Liljenquist Family Fellow, and Prints & Photographs Division staff members, Karen Chittenden and Micah Messenheimer, about creating a Story Map focusing on the Civil War experience of Susie King Taylor. Many courageous people are pulling double and triple duty in this time of quarantine for …
Visitors to the 1900 Paris Exposition would have had the opportunity to view an extraordinary display of photographs, charts, publications and other items meant to demonstrate the progress and resilience of African Americans in the United States, only a few decades after the abolition of slavery. The materials were assembled by African American intellectuals Thomas J. …
The following is a post by Kristi Finefield, Reference Specialist in the Prints & Photographs Division, and member of the Picture This blog team. Images have a way of opening our eyes to new aspects of a well-known story. When I think of singer Marian Anderson, an image of her performing at the Lincoln Memorial …
Frederick Douglass was a firm believer in the power of pictures. In an 1861 lecture called “Pictures and Progress” by the press, Douglass wondered why photography pioneer Louis Daguerre was not more frequently compared with inventors of such vaunted technologies as the telegraph or the steamboat: “the great father of our modern pictures is seldom …
![Washington's prominent figures listen to Marian Anderson's singing. Washington, D.C., April 9. Behind Marian Anderson, the heroic statue of Lincoln; beside her, Cabinet members and Senators; before her a crowd of 75,000 black and white listeners. Left to right - Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morganthau, Mrs. Morganthau, Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes, [...] at the piano, Marian Anderson. 4-9-39. Photo by Harris & Ewing, 1939 April 9. http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/hec.26452](https://blogs.loc.gov/picturethis/files/2020/04/Anderson_Lincoln.jpg)