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 …
Water poses a particular challenge for cameras because like most technology, they prefer not to get wet. This fact doesn’t stop a determined photographer. The examples below offer up a number of ways to work under, through and over water – anything to get the shot! What to do if your intended subjects live underwater? …
The following is a guest post for the Feast Your Eyes series by Marilyn Ibach, Reference Specialist, Prints and Photographs Division. The latest installment in the Feast Your Eyes series features a perennial favorite: the doughnut. The constant in these images of doughnuts is their appeal – seen in the smiling faces of soldiers, society …
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 …
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 …
The following is a guest post for the Feast Your Eyes series by Arden Alexander, Cataloging Specialist, Prints and Photographs Division. Numerous photographs in the Prints and Photographs Division’s over 75,000 historical images of the Middle East show the people of the region harvesting, preparing, cooking, selling and enjoying food and drink. Included in these …
When I was a kid, I was happy to tool around the neighborhood on my red, white and blue bike, handlebar tassels flowing in the breeze. My brother, on the other hand, once attempted to jump a Volkswagen Beetle on his two wheeler. Bicycles can tempt certain people to go fast, go high and try …
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 …
After my babies came I determined to learn to use the brush. I wanted to hold their lovely little faces in some way that should be also my expression, so I went to an art school; two or three of them, in fact. But art is long and childhood is fleeting, I soon discovered, and …