Our online collections support many a research project, but contact with physical photographs and graphic items can be eye-opening and reveal new avenues for investigation. Kya Mangrum, a doctoral candidate in English Language and Literature at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, recently spent several days in the Prints and Photographs Reading Room exploring images of …
I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that, in addition to marking the 150th anniversary of key developments in the U.S. Civil War, we are now looking back at an even earlier conflict as the War of 1812 bicentennial launches. Two hundred years to the day have passed since the United States declared war on …
This year we’re marking anniversaries of key events in two wars: the U.S. Civil War and the War of 1812 (about which, stay tuned!). At the risk of seeming to be focused on conflict, we’re also looking ahead to the anniversary of what H.G. Wells dubbed “The War That Will End War.” As it turned …
Photographing the Golden Gate Bridge is a challenge on many levels – quite literally! Nearly 9,000 feet in length, and rising almost 800 feet into the air, it doesn’t pose easily for the camera. I can only assume from looking at the images of the Golden Gate Bridge in the Prints and Photographs Online Catalog, …
Nearly half a million people lived in San Francisco, California on Wednesday, April 18, 1906. The majority of them were fast asleep when the world began to shake apart. At 5:12 a.m. the city was struck by a massive earthquake, one which modern science estimates at anywhere from 7.8 to 8.2 on the Richter scale. …
Who are the two little French boys that were dropped, almost naked, from the deck of the sinking Titanic into the arms of survivors in a lifeboat? From which place in France did they come and to which place in the new world were they bound? There is not one iota of information to be …
The following is a guest post by Helena Zinkham, Chief, Prints & Photographs Division. When house and garden historian Sam Watters first learned about Frances B. Johnston’s color garden photos from the early 1900s, he e-mailed us right away. An appointment was soon arranged to show him these fascinating but uncataloged “magic lantern slides.” We …
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 …
One hundred years ago, the city of Tokyo sent Washington, D.C. a gift of friendship that continues to bloom today. Quite literally, in fact! Three thousand flowering cherry trees arrived in D.C. in 1912, and started what has become an annual spring tradition for residents of the D.C. area and thousands of tourists: going to …
