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Category: Photographs

Smiling woman dressed in outdoor winter clothes holds a large, old-style camera

Caught Our Eyes: Fashion Flashback

Posted by: Kristi Finefield

Earlier this month, New York City’s catwalks were filled with the latest creations from the world of fashion during the biannual ritual of Fashion Week. At the same time, I was searching in the George Grantham Bain Collection while answering a reference question and came across this stylish photograph. How could I resist stopping to …

Smiling woman dressed in outdoor winter clothes holds a large, old-style camera

The National Book Festival – please join us!

Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson

The Prints & Photographs Division will be on hand at this weekend’s National Book Festival (Sept. 22-23).  If you’re planning on attending, please look for us in the LC Pavilion. Our focus will be “reading photographs,” and we’re inviting visitors to participate in a photo captioning game called “What’s My Title?” We’ll be displaying a …

Smiling woman dressed in outdoor winter clothes holds a large, old-style camera

Antietam: Can One Picture Tell the Story?

Posted by: Jeff Bridgers

The following is a guest post by Helena Zinkham, Chief, Prints & Photographs Division. If you had to pick just one picture to represent the Battle of Antietam, which would you choose? A photograph of a young girl wearing mourning ribbons and holding a photograph of her father could symbolize the wide-spread and lasting losses …

Smiling woman dressed in outdoor winter clothes holds a large, old-style camera

Caught Our Eyes: Better with Butter

Posted by: Kristi Finefield

Reading the caption for a photograph can sometimes change every assumption made at first glance. One word in the title of this photograph shifted my entire view, and definitely caught my eye. Look at the image yourself, and then read the full title as it was written on the back of this stereograph card. The …

Smiling woman dressed in outdoor winter clothes holds a large, old-style camera

It Happens Every Four Years!

Posted by: Jeff Bridgers

What summer event filled with spectacle and circumstance, speeches and ovations, and capped by a balloon drop happens every four years? No, it’s not the Olympic Games; it’s political party convention time! These quadrennial events are the formal nominating process for the presidential and vice-presidential candidates. In addition to the serious work of nailing down …

Smiling woman dressed in outdoor winter clothes holds a large, old-style camera

Not for the Acrophobic: Painting the Capitol Dome

Posted by: Jeff Bridgers

Here’s a job that’s not for the acrophobic — painting the outside of the Capitol dome! In fact, this 1922 photograph from our National Photo Company Collection may bring on a bit of vertigo in our heights-sensitive readers when they realize how high up in the air this painter is suspended. If this thought hasn’t …