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Category: Flickr

Postcard Views From Above

Posted by: Kristi Finefield

Included in my most recent Flickr album on aerial views was the postcard below. This particular card is a photomechanical color print of Tulane Stadium in New Orleans, Louisiana. This was the site of the annual Sugar Bowl college football game for its first few decades, until it moved to the Superdome. Finding it sent …

Pictures on Textiles

Posted by: Kristi Finefield

The vast majority of the items in the Prints & Photographs Division’s collections are works of art on paper, such as photographs, posters, and architectural drawings. However, there are exceptions. In my latest Flickr album heralding the coming of autumn, there are two items featured that are not on paper at all, but are instead …

All Aboard for Pikes Peak

Posted by: Kristi Finefield

In my most recent selection of railroad-related images on Flickr, All Aboard!, the photo that received the most attention was this one of the Manitou & Pike’s Peak Railway. I’m imagining the seemingly backwards and tilted locomotive drew some curiousity. This is a cog railway, used to climb steep grades. The boiler in this steam …

Powder Horn or Map? Both!

Posted by: Kristi Finefield

One of the photos I chose for my recent Flickr album, All Over the Map, caught my attention not just for the image, but also the associated title. This 1930 news photo from the Harris & Ewing Collection says, as part of its original caption: “Quite a contrast between the modern map in the background …

A Truly Ten Gallon Hat

Posted by: Kristi Finefield

During my search through our collections for interesting hats, bonnets, caps, and all manner of headgear for my most recent Flickr album, I found one hat that most certainly was never meant to sit on anyone’s head. When it opened in 1954 as the “Premium Tex” gas station, this red hat captured drivers’ imaginations on …

Cats are Looking at You

Posted by: Kristi Finefield

In my most recent Flickr album, Animals are Looking at You, twenty two animals are peering out at you from black-and-white photographs. The photos were initially selected by Office of War Information staff in 1945 for a display in the Photographic Section file room. The Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection (FSA/OWI) was transferred …

Double Take: A Tale of Two Oxen

Posted by: Kristi Finefield

One of my favorite ways to explore the vast collections of the Prints & Photographs Division is to look for connections between multiple collections that span different time periods. Quite by accident while searching for another photo in the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, I found this fascinating 1942 photo of a stop …

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

“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 …