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Posted by: Kristi Finefield
The basic goal of a portrait is to capture the likeness of the subject. But a portrait can offer a lot more information than simply the shape of a face. As with all visual images, portraits lend themselves to further exploration. Why was the portrait made? What does it tell the viewer about the subject …
Posted in: Photographs, Portraits, Series: Profiling Portraits
Posted by: Kristi Finefield
With holdings of close to 16 million images, there are always new discoveries to be made in the Prints and Photographs Division. When collections become easier to search through digitization, staff are the first to go digging through the “new” images like kids in a visual candy store. During my exploration of the over 25,000 …
Posted in: Photographs, Portraits, Series: Anything to Get the Shot
Posted by: Kristi Finefield
“…the great success of Mr. Bell is due to his suavity of manner coupled with high artistic ability, and to the gentlemanly deportment observed by his corps of assistants. The rule is, politeness to everybody.” –Photographic Times and American Photographer, Sept. 1, 1883. From the 1870s until the 1910s, tens of thousands of people in …
Posted in: Photographs, Portraits
Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson
The following is a guest post by Beverly Brannan, Curator of Photography, Prints & Photographs Division. African American women as well as men assumed civic responsibilities in the decades after the Civil War. William Henry Richards (1856-1941) was active in several organizations that promoted civil rights and civil liberties for African Americans at the end …
Posted in: African American History, Photographs, Portraits, Women's History
Posted by: Kristi Finefield
Have you ever tried to photograph a baby? No easy task! The first challenge is getting him or her to smile, a job at which this photographer is currently failing, despite his best efforts: The second challenge is simply this: young babies cannot sit up on their own. Hence the need for a photographer to …
Posted in: Photographs, Portraits, Series: Anything to Get the Shot
Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson
With the many new faces on Capitol Hill this month as the 114th Congress gets underway, it’s an apt time to revisit the faces and activities of members of Congress of yesteryear. A new guide, “Pictures of Congress: An Overview,” helps researchers do just that. Although the Prints & Photographs Division generally does not receive …
Posted in: Cartoons, Photographs, Portraits, Prints
Posted by: Jeff Bridgers
Strange as it may appear, whatever may be a colored man’s natural capacity and literary attainments, I believe that, as soon as he leaves the academic halls to mingle in the only society he can find in the United States, unless he be a minister or lecturer, he must and will retrograde. –Augustus Washington, letter …
Posted in: African American History, Photographs, Portraits
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: 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