The following is the third in a series of guest posts by Micah Messenheimer, Assistant Curator of Photography, Prints and Photographs Division, that discuss the parallel development of two technologies in the 19th century: railroads and photography. The catalysts for a transcontinental railroad lie in the increasing industrialization of the country and the rapid expansion …
Settle in for a good strong cuppa because December 15 is International Tea Day! Tea drinking began thousands of years ago in China and made its way west to Europe through Dutch trade in the sixteenth century. By the nineteenth century, the East India Company had a monopoly on the tea trade between China and …
I did more than a double take when I saw the photograph below while searching in the Prints and Photographs Online Catalog – I did a triple and maybe even a quadruple take! Once I convinced my brain of what I was seeing, I knew mirror images would be the theme of this installment of …
The following is the second in a series of guest posts by Micah Messenheimer, Assistant Curator of Photography, Prints and Photographs Division that discuss the parallel development of two technologies in the 19th century: railroads and photography. Picking up the story after John Plumbe’s successes as a daguerreotypist and his disappointments in plans for a …
The following is a guest post by Naomi Subotnick, Liljenquist Fellow, Prints and Photographs Division, Summer 2017. This past summer, I worked as a Liljenquist Fellow in the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress, where I helped to digitize, catalog, and house recently acquired Civil War-era photographs. Working with the Liljenquist Family …
The following is a guest post by Helena Zinkham, Chief, Prints & Photographs Division. You can find libraries at the heart of many different communities, from the center of a town or a college campus to a shared toolbox at a construction site. The new book American Libraries, written by architectural historian Kenneth Breisch, takes …
When John Margolies gave a talk at the Library of Congress in 2011 about his project to photograph roadside attractions and commercial vistas all across America, he remarked, “If anybody knows if these places still exist, tell me later ’cause that’s very often the only way that I find out whether things are there anymore.” …
The basic goal of a portrait is to capture the likeness of the subject. But a portrait can offer a lot more information than simply the shape of a face. As with all visual images, portraits lend themselves to further exploration. Why was the portrait made? What does it tell the viewer about the subject …
The following is a guest post by Melissa Lindberg, Reference Librarian, Prints and Photographs Division Now that autumn has begun, it’s natural to look forward to its visual splendor. Searching the Prints & Photographs Online Catalog for visual inspiration to match the brisk change in the air, I stumbled upon this autumnal scene from 1911 …