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Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson
From my earliest days of coloring school worksheets, cornucopias are the symbol I associate with the harvest season and the Thanksgiving holiday many Americans will be celebrating this week. Also known as the “horn of plenty,” the typical representation features vegetables and fruits spilling forth in abundance. In searching the Prints & Photographs Online Catalog, …
Posted in: Drawings, Photographs
Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson
The following is a guest post by Beverly Brannan, Curator of Photography, Prints and Photographs Division. When I read For Whom the Bell Tolls in my junior year of high school, it was just the most romantic thing I had ever come across, and I fell in love with the thought of fighting for one’s …
Posted in: News & Events, Photographs
Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson
The following is a guest post by Verna Curtis, Curator of Photography, Prints and Photographs Division. Imagine how people understood photographs in 1900, when photography had been around for just over sixty years. Were photographs factual documents? Could they be a new form of artistic expression? Those producing photographic prints knew, but the public was …
Posted in: News & Events, Photographs
Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson
This year’s anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 has offered occasion to pause and reflect on the injustices the legislation was meant to address, the actions that called attention to those injustices, and the continued struggle to see legislative ideals become everyday reality. Last week we added a new “album” to the Library …
Posted in: African American History, Flickr, News & Events, Photographs
Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson
My colleagues and I had a wonderful time talking with visitors to our table at the National Book Festival last Saturday. We brought copies of some of our favorite photographs, prints, and drawings, focusing on those for which we knew at least a piece of the story behind them. And we literally put the story …
Posted in: News & Events, Photographs
Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson
When I refile pictures that researchers have recently been consulting, I’m almost guaranteed to run across at least one that demands a second look. My first thought upon seeing this picture, which was copyrighted in 1920, was: How frightening would it have been to be on the streets of Portland, Oregon, when these airplanes swooped …
Posted in: Photographs, Series: Caught Our Eyes
Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson
As I was trolling through Bain News Service photographs from 100 years ago, I couldn’t help but reflect on how hindsight shapes our view of pictures and their meaning. I stopped in my tracks at this photo from July 27, 1914, with its evocative depiction of cooling recreation on a warm day. Despite the somewhat …
Posted in: Photographs
Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson
When I ran across this image recently, it struck me just how much parades and flags go together and, furthermore, how much people have experimented with displaying enormous flags. In this case, the flag was probably better seen from the photographer’s vantage point than by spectators on the ground. As is so often the case, …
Posted in: Photographs, Series: Caught Our Eyes
Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson
The following is a guest post by Gay Colyer, Digital Library Specialist, Prints & Photographs Division. We need your help to identify 68 photos of historic structures. They’re posted in a Flickr album called “Mystery Houses,” so that it’s easy to add your notes.* The photographer, Frances Benjamin Johnston, did leave a basic clue for …
Posted in: Architecture, Flickr, Photographs