Top of page
Posted by: Kristi Finefield
If you are interested in learning more about visual literacy and historical thinking and about resources such as historical newspapers and photographs, you are in luck! Join us online for a free two-day event: “The Library of Congress and Teachers: Unlocking the Power of Primary Sources.” The virtual conference will take place October 27-28, 2015 …
Posted in: News & Events, Photographs, Visual literacy
Posted by: Jeff Bridgers
My initial impression of the jovial sailors pictured below was that a letter “d” must have been left out of the annotated title in the photograph’s upper left corner. This World War I era photo from the Bain News Service is one of more than 15,000 photographs (a hefty subset of the 40,000 available from …
Posted in: Flickr, News & Events, Photographs
Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson
Okay, you’d think a staff member in the Prints & Photographs Division would be capable of making a photograph with better composition than what I achieved last weekend at the National Book Festival. But my photo does at least reflect the reality of the occasion: We had such a steady stream of enthusiastic visitors stopping …
Posted in: News & Events, Photographs, Prints
Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson
When I look at my family photographs, the stories behind them usually come flooding back to me. I recall the occasion–and often people and events I associate with the occasion, even if they aren’t shown in the pictures. But lacking those personal associations, photographs–especially historical photographs–can seem like vast mysteries–or closed storybooks. Now a wonderful …
Posted in: News & Events, Photographs, Visual literacy
Posted by: Jeff Bridgers
Coffin that passes through lanes and streets, Through day and night with the great cloud darkening the land, With the pomp of the inloop’d flags with the cities draped in black, . . . . With all the mournful voices of the dirges pour’d around the coffin, The dim-lit churches and the shuddering organs–where amid …
Posted in: Drawings, News & Events, Photographs
Posted by: Jeff Bridgers
The following is a guest post by Katherine Blood, Curator of Fine Prints, and Mari Nakahara, Curator of Architecture, Design, and Engineering, Prints & Photographs Division: As Washington’s beloved cherry trees are in full bloom, we are inspired to share an assortment of seasonal-themed images from the Library’s extensive holdings of Japanese woodblock prints. In Japanese …
Posted in: Flickr, News & Events, Photographs, Prints
Posted by: Jeff Bridgers
In the U.S., editorial cartoonists come in all stripes of the multi-hued American political spectrum. So, it’s not surprising that the points of view expressed in their visual commentary are as varied as their cartooning styles. A recently-opened Library of Congress exhibition, Pointing Their Pens: Herblock and Fellow Cartoonists Confront the Issues, as described in its Overview “offers viewers an …
Posted in: Cartoons, Drawings, News & Events
Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson
Pictures can eloquently convey some of the ugliness of war. Creating art can also be a powerful means of communicating the experience of war and coping with war trauma. On Thursday, January 22nd, Tara Tappert, an independent scholar who has spent the past twelve months as a David B. Larson Fellow in Health & Spirituality …
Posted in: News & Events, Photographs, Posters, Researcher Stories