The following is a guest post by Anne Mitchell, Senior Cataloging Specialist, Prints and Photographs Division. Interested in news-worthy people and events from the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s? Get ready to explore the work of photographer Bernard Gotfryd, who donated his work to the Library of Congress. Copyright restrictions ended in 2016. Now available online …
The following guest post is by Katherine Blood, Curator of Fine Prints, Prints & Photographs Division In honor of African American History Month, this gathering of extraordinary individual and group portraits by contemporary artists features works that speak of community, family, and the envisioned past, present, and future. Nelson Stevens’s vibrant screenprint called Spirit Sister, …
Juneteenth celebrates the emancipation of enslaved African Americans. One way to commemorate this anniversary might be to explore the online collection Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936-1938. More than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of formerly enslaved people are available online. These narratives were collected in …
The following is a guest post by Ryan Brubacher, Reference Librarian, Prints & Photographs Division Lewis Hine, at a certain point in his career, began to refer to himself as an “interpretive photographer” and not a social photographer as he’d been previously termed. While we might imagine him an investigative photo-journalist by today’s standards, his …
Eleven years ago today we posted our first sets of photos in the Flickr Commons, which was created to share treasures from the world’s public archives. Thousands of pictures, views, and comments later, we’re celebrating with a new album of pictures with an “eleven-ish” connection and an invitation to participate in a tagging activity in …
In this latest entry in our occasional series, Profiling Portraits, I was inspired by an attempt to take a group photo during a recent family visit, as well as time spent looking through photo albums at previous years’ similar efforts. Family photos tend to evoke memories, elicit questions about older ancestors and of course provide …
The following is a guest post by Ben Zuercher, Liljenquist Family Fellow through the Stanford in Government program, Prints & Photographs Division, Summer 2018. Ben helped to describe recently received items in the Liljenquist Family Collection. Working with the Liljenquist collection carries the constant feeling of wonder and intrigue, as every picture tells a story …
Many pictures come into Prints and Photographs Division collections with little or no identification on them. It’s not entirely surprising, since a portion of our collections were generated or collected by individuals who readily knew the who, what, where and when that depictions can evoke and didn’t feel compelled to write it down. But even …
Last week, Prints and Photographs Division staff had an opportunity to participate in Washington, D.C.’s first annual celebration of Harriet Tubman Day, which represented several very satisfying convergences. The official Harriet Tubman Day is March 10th, the date of Tubman’s death (the date of her birth is not known). The celebration was held March 8th …
