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Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson
A pair of pictures from the Harris & Ewing Collection caught the eye of Prints & Photographs Division reference technician, Jonathan Eaker. He shared them with the comment, “Really tall cowboy!” I looked at the first picture. On the basis of the length of the chaps, alone, not to mention the interested stares of the …
Posted in: Photographs, Series: Caught Our Eyes
Posted by: Jeff Bridgers
The following is a guest post by Helena Zinkham, Chief, Prints & Photographs Division. The renowned editorial cartoon artist Herblock (1909-2001) was a vocal advocate for the environment throughout his long career. The new exhibition “Down to Earth” presents a fascinating look at toxic waste, air pollution, and land conservation by pairing Herblock’s hard hitting …
Posted in: Cartoons, News & Events, Photographs
Posted by: Jeff Bridgers
On Thanksgiving Day, 1940, Farm Security Administration photographer Jack Delano shot a series of pictures documenting the celebration of the holiday at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Crouch in Ledyard, Connecticut. In this clever composition, the tantalizing desserts fill the foreground while the feasting family is reflected in the mirror. We wish you all …
Posted in: Photographs
Posted by: Kristi Finefield
In a career spanning forty-six years, Jack E. Boucher traveled through forty-nine states and two U.S. territories to photograph for the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) and its sister projects, the Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) and Historic American Landscapes Survey (HALS). Boucher passed away recently, so I asked colleagues here to share stories …
Posted in: Architecture, HABS/HAER/HALS, Photographs
Posted by: Jeff Bridgers
The following is a guest post by Helena Zinkham, Chief, Prints & Photographs Division When you look at a soldier’s portrait from the American Civil War, have you ever wondered what that particular person, or his regiment, experienced? For twenty of the Union and Confederate soldiers whose names survived with their photographs in the Liljenquist …
Posted in: News & Events, Photographs, Portraits
Posted by: Kristi Finefield
Still trying to decide about your costume for Halloween? Torn between a witch or a princess? An astronaut or a librarian? (Surely someone out there was going to dress as a librarian?) Throw out all those ideas because I have the solution! Amaze your friends and family by arriving at your Halloween festivities (or even …
Posted in: Photographs, Series: Caught Our Eyes
Posted by: Jeff Bridgers
With the World Series just around the bend, baseball has been on my mind. In 1910, photographer Paul Thompson copyrighted a series of photographic portraits he had taken of baseball players. The portraits are simple straight-on head-and-shoulders shots with the players gazing directly back at the camera. These same portraits would serve as the basis …
Posted in: Photographs, Portraits, Prints
Posted by: Kristi Finefield
Fishbowls, Whittling, Email, and Ice cream parlors. What could those four terms possibly have in common? It turns out they are all recent additions to the Thesaurus for Graphic Materials (TGM). Which naturally leads to the question: What is the Thesaurus for Graphic Materials? Briefly, TGM is a tool for indexing visual materials, both by …
Posted in: Photographs
Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson
We mentioned a couple of weeks ago that we’d be playing a game called “What’s My Title?” at the National Book Festival (Sept. 22-23). I can testify that it was wildly successful–and great fun. Hundreds of people stopped by to look at the five popular photographs we mounted on a wall, and many accepted the …
Posted in: Flickr, News & Events, Photographs, Visual literacy