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Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson
In the era before the development of social media, how did you get a big message across? Type it out on a giant typewriter! Reference Librarian Jon Eaker ran across this photo while browsing the Harris & Ewing negatives online. It came with very little information. As with many images that catch our eyes, however, …
Posted in: Photographs, Series: Caught Our Eyes
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: Lara Szypszak
Sometimes I come across a photo in our collections that just tickles me pink, but also makes me want to learn more. One such photo of two dancing dames alongside a congressman led me to pictures of the Charleston dance craze taking the nation’s capitol by storm and sent me digging deeper in the hopes …
Posted in: News & Events, Photographs
Posted by: Julie Stoner
Cold weather and I do not get along; I infinitely prefer the warm sun with a refreshing breeze. With the holidays behind and the remainder of winter ahead, I decided to search the term “sunshine” in the Prints and Photographs Online Catalog to give me hope of warmer weather to come. The photograph below of …
Posted in: Prints
Posted by: Julie Stoner
The end of August reminds me of the sweltering hot days I spent as a teenager in band camp, marching back and forth across the black pavement of the high school parking lot, attempting to learn field formations while simultaneously playing only half-remembered music. Though well past my marching days, I still appreciate a well-executed …
Posted in: Prints
Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson
The following is a guest post by Arden Alexander, Cataloging Specialist in the Prints & Photographs Division. The U.S. Congress has always been a popular research topic for Prints and Photographs Division patrons. The recently processed Roll Call Collection offers a wealth of photographs that pick up where our other collections leave off, covering the …
Posted in: Photographs
Posted by: Kristi Finefield
A log cabin, a city row house, and a Baptist church. As a list of buildings, it is unremarkable. When I describe these three structures with a focus on their places in history, the list gets much more interesting. They are also: the slave quarters on the Tennessee plantation owned by Pres. Andrew Jackson, the …
Posted in: African American History, HABS/HAER/HALS, Photographs
Posted by: Jeff Bridgers
The title of the 1939 Arthur Rothstein photograph below indicates that the men gathered on this Montrose, Colorado, sidewalk are watching the scoreboard, a blackboard mounted outside the entry of Daily Press Printing. But the two loudspeakers flanking the Daily Press storefront suggest the assembled may also be following a radio broadcast or perhaps very localized play-by-play call from …
Posted in: Photographs
Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson
“Entered according to the act of Congress” sounds like a grand entry, indeed, and it’s a phrase we are often asked about because it appears near the bottom of many pictures. But what does it mean? Starting in 1802, that phrase was required by U.S. Copyright law to be on works for which a rights …
Posted in: Prints