Image description: This photocrom shows Telemark, Norway sometime between 1890 and 1910. It was published by the Detroit Publishing Company.
Photocroms are richly colored images look like photographs but are actually ink-based photolithographs, usually measuring 6.5 x 9 inches.
Image from the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division
Image description: This microphotograph, pictured next to a penny to show the scale, is only 1 millimeter wide and possibly the smallest image the Library of Congress owns. When magnified, you can see people standing in front of a building, a mental hospital. It was taken in Philadelphia around 1858.
Learn more about this microphotograph.
Photos from the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division
Image description: In June 2011, First Lady Michelle Obama met with Nelson Mandela, the former President of South Africa, at Mandela’s home in Houghton, South Africa.
The photo is part of Pete Souza’s picks for the year 2011 in images. Pete Souza is the Chief Official White House Photographer and Director of the White House Photography Office. View all of his 2011 photo selections.
Photo by Samantha Appleton, White House
Image description: This image, titled “Terrific Pounding Of German Lines by British Howitzers in the Battle of the Somme in 1917,” was published in the New York Times. During the World War I era (1914-18), leading newspapers took advantage of a new printing process that dramatically altered their ability to reproduce images. Rotogravure printing, which produced richly detailed, high quality illustrations—even on inexpensive newsprint paper—was used to create vivid new pictorial sections. Publishers that could afford to invest in the new technology saw sharp increases both in readership and advertising revenue.
Photo from the Library of Congress
Image description: This photo, circa 1889, shows a ghost scaring two men. From the mid-1800s to early-1900s, “spirit photographs” were popular and easy to fake. Learn more about spirit photographs.
Photo from the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division
