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Category: Portraits

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

Augustus Washington, Daguerreotypist

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 …

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

Glimpses of Soldiers’ Lives (American Civil War)

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 …

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

From Player Portraits to Baseball Cards

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 …

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

Civil War Faces – New Additions

Posted by: Kristi Finefield

The following is a guest post by Helena Zinkham, Chief, Prints & Photographs Division. “You know the generals. Now meet the young men who made them famous.” That’s how Tom Liljenquist describes the special collection of rare portrait photographs that he continues to build at the Library of Congress to commemorate the American Civil War. …