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Category: Photographs

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 …

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

An Olympic Tug of War

Posted by: Kristi Finefield

I love the Olympics. I love the competition, the ceremonies, the sportsmanship. My earliest personal experience with a festival of games was on a pretty small scale: the annual Field Day in grade school. My favorite event wasn’t the water balloon toss or the three-legged race. It was the ultimate battle between classes, Tug of …

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

Celebrate Sparkling New FSA Scans

Posted by: Jeff Bridgers

The following is a guest post by Helena Zinkham, Chief, Prints & Photographs Division. Drum roll please! Fireworks, too! Please join us in celebrating not only the Fourth of July, but the arrival of new scans that showcase close to 45,000 of the beloved Great Depression era photographs in the Farm Security Administration Collection (FSA). …

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

P&P Snapshot: A Look at On Site Research

Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson

Our online collections support many a research project, but contact with physical photographs and graphic items can be eye-opening and reveal new avenues for investigation. Kya Mangrum, a doctoral candidate in English Language and Literature at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, recently spent several days in the Prints and Photographs Reading Room exploring images of …