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Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson
The author signing lines have long disappeared and the tents have come down, but we are still reveling in the pleasures of sharing photos and ideas about photos at the National Book Festival last month (Sept. 24-25). We had hundreds of people stop by our table in the Library of Congress Pavilion to try our …
Posted in: News & Events, Photographs, Visual literacy
Posted by: Jeff Bridgers
Fans of the photos we share through the Library of Congress Flickr account have expressed interest recently in the Bain News Service’s coverage of the 1914 World Series which appear in our photostream. It certainly is timely as the World Series starts tonight pitting the St. Louis Cardinals against the Texas Rangers in a best-of-seven …
Posted in: Photographs, Posters
Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson
Explore the faces, places and events of the U.S. Civil War in a single online location, using a new feature in the Prints & Photographs Online Catalog. The “Civil War” category aids research across thousands of images relating to the Civil War that are found in different Prints & Photographs Division collections in a variety …
Posted in: Drawings, News & Events, Photographs
Posted by: Jeff Bridgers
During the summer of 1936, Walker Evans, a preeminent photo documentarian of the New Deal, worked with writer James Agee on a project originally intended for Fortune magazine about the devastating effects of economic conditions on white tenant farmers. Agee and Evans spent eight weeks that summer researching their assignment, mainly among three white sharecropping …
Posted in: Photographs
Posted by: Kristi Finefield
When working with historical photo collections, it always pays to ask yourself: Does the title match the content? The original photographers sometimes mixed up dates and places, or misspelled words and omitted key info — just like you or I might. Glancing at this pair of photographs, they seem to show the same scene. But …
Posted in: Photographs, Visual literacy
Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson
Recently I had one of those days when Prints & Photographs Division collections intersected with my personal life. I came home to an exclamation from my daughter, who was trolling the Prints & Photographs Online Catalog for a school assignment: “Mom, the Office of War Information photographed my high school during World War II!” The …
Posted in: Flickr, News & Events, Photographs
Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson
What’s the date of this photo? Take your best guess, and then I’ll mention some clues I pursued. The photo shows the busy catalog card distribution office at the Library of Congress. There’s no date on the photographic print. Recently, we needed to determine when the photo was taken, so out came my magnifying glass. …
Posted in: Photographs, Posters, Visual literacy
Posted by: Kristi Finefield
Catch the man – and the woman – behind the camera in a set of photographs recently added to the Library of Congress Flickr photostream. Drawn from multiple collections and ranging from the mid-1800s to the modern day, the Photographer in the Picture set shows photographers at work, sometimes catching them only in shadow or …
Posted in: Flickr, Photographs
Posted by: Jeff Bridgers
On September 26, 1859, sisters Lucretia Electa and Louisa Ellen Crossett stood before photographer Alfred Hall to have their portrait taken together in Lawrence, Massachusetts. I like to think of them as mill workers participating in the expanding American Industrial Revolution. The sisters, dressed in identical aprons, blouses, and simple jewelry, are both holding weaving …
Posted in: Photographs, Series: Caught Our Eyes