Each month, I gather images from the holdings of the Prints & Photographs Division for a Flickr album. The albums have a theme, the most recent one being Women Photographers of the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information (FSA/OWI). It features the work of Esther Bubley, Marjory Collins, Dorothea Lange, And Marion Post Wolcott. As …
The following is a guest post by Barbara Orbach Natanson, former Reference Section Head, Prints & Photographs Division. Being a woman of a certain age myself, I recently began to wonder how and where older women are depicted in Prints & Photographs Division collections. Naturally, even in embarking on such an exploration, one has to …
Like many people, I enjoy researching my family history, exploring my genealogy and collecting interesting facts, images, and records. As you can imagine, I sometimes come across visual materials in my work that make me think about my hobby. In our collections, we have many examples of commercially printed and sold family trees, records and …
We are pleased to announce the publication of a new guide describing the Prints & Photographs Division’s large and varied collection of cartoon and caricature art. Martha H. Kennedy, now retired Curator of Popular & Applied Graphic Art and author of the guide, describes the appeal of this collection material: “The Library’s vast, diverse collections …
The collections of the Prints & Photographs Division of the Library of Congress include thousands of photochroms. These early color prints were photomechanically reproduced so they weren’t photographs in the traditional sense. I spent some time looking through the photochroms, most of which date from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, while working on …
This week, we’re looking at something I don’t like very much – fruitcake. This seasonal sweet treat has never appealed to me. But while preparing for a recent Flickr album featuring images of butter and baking, I stumbled upon three fruitcake photos that caught my eye and deserved detailed views. First up, a Russell Lee …
The following is a guest post by Katherine Blood, Curator of Fine Prints, Prints & Photographs Division. A longer version will appear in On Paper: Journal of the Washington Print Club (Fall 2021). Like poetry, literature, and music—visual art can reflect history, society, politics, and culture in uniquely powerful ways. Artists’ prints typically exist in …
The following is a guest post by Sara W. Duke, Curator of Popular and Applied Graphic Arts, Prints and Photographs Division. Popeye, Superman, Wonder Woman, Black Panther – some cartoon characters have become both instantly and internationally recognizable, but they didn’t get their start on television or in the movies, but rather on the pages …
The following is a guest post by Charlotte Giles, Reference Librarian, Asian Division. In a new acquisition by the Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division, Chitra Ganesh, a visual artist based in Brooklyn, retells the 1905 Indian feminist utopian essay, “Sultana’s Dream” by Begum Rokeya Sakhawat, but in the style of a graphic novel …