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Caught Our Eyes: Most Original Costume

October 31, 2012 by Kristi Finefield

Still trying to decide about your costume for Halloween? Torn between a witch or a princess? An astronaut or a librarian? (Surely someone out there was going to dress as a librarian?)

Throw out all those ideas because I have the solution! Amaze your friends and family by arriving at your Halloween festivities (or even just the front door for trick-or-treaters) dressed like the winner for Most Original costume in the photograph below:

Costume prize winners at Arts Club’s Bal Bohème. Washington, D.C., April 10. Washington’s annual costume ball, the Bal Boheme, took as its theme this year, ‘Paris au Printemps’. Highlight of the evening was presentation of prizes for costumes. Photo by Harris & Ewing, April 10, 1939. http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/hec.26485

Yes, I do mean the man with the planter on his head. He is dressed as ‘the trees and shrubs of Paris’, in keeping with the theme of this costume ball: Paris au Printemps, or Paris in the Springtime. Held in April of 1939 and sponsored by the Arts Club of Washington, the Bal Bohème featured many costumes in the theme, but no one else had a topiary as a headpiece and small urns strapped to his feet, so I think the winner was clear, don’t you?

Learn More:

Enjoy images related to Halloween in the Prints and Photographs Online Catalog.
Explore the Harris & Ewing Collection for more insight into daily life in Washington, D.C. between 1905 and 1945. The collection includes photographs of people, architecture, and events – such as costume balls.

New for You: Presidential Campaign Posters Book

October 25, 2012 by Jeff Bridgers

The following is a guest post by Helena Zinkham, Chief, Prints & Photographs Division. The creative staff members in the Library of Congress Publishing Office produce fascinating new books each year by digging deeply into our remarkable collections, aided by Prints & Photographs Division staff. The recently issued volume, Presidential Campaign Posters from the Library …

From Player Portraits to Baseball Cards

October 17, 2012 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 …

A Yak by Any Other Name: Meet the Thesaurus for Graphic Materials

October 12, 2012 by Kristi Finefield

Fishbowls, Whittling, Email, and Ice cream parlors. What could those four terms possibly have in common? It turns out they are all recent additions to the Thesaurus for Graphic Materials (TGM). Which naturally leads to the question: What is the Thesaurus for Graphic Materials? Briefly, TGM is a tool for indexing visual materials, both by …

A Summer of Sharing

October 4, 2012 by Barbara Orbach Natanson

We mentioned a couple of weeks ago that we’d be playing a game called “What’s My Title?” at the National Book Festival (Sept. 22-23). I can testify that it was wildly successful–and great fun. Hundreds of people stopped by to look at the five popular photographs we mounted on a wall, and many accepted the …

Caught Our Eyes: Fashion Flashback

September 27, 2012 by Kristi Finefield

Earlier this month, New York City’s catwalks were filled with the latest creations from the world of fashion during the biannual ritual of Fashion Week. At the same time, I was searching in the George Grantham Bain Collection while answering a reference question and came across this stylish photograph. How could I resist stopping to …

The National Book Festival – please join us!

September 20, 2012 by Barbara Orbach Natanson

The Prints & Photographs Division will be on hand at this weekend’s National Book Festival (Sept. 22-23). If you’re planning on attending, please look for us in the LC Pavilion. Our focus will be “reading photographs,” and we’re inviting visitors to participate in a photo captioning game called “What’s My Title?” We’ll be displaying a …

Antietam: Can One Picture Tell the Story?

September 14, 2012 by Jeff Bridgers

The following is a guest post by Helena Zinkham, Chief, Prints & Photographs Division. If you had to pick just one picture to represent the Battle of Antietam, which would you choose? A photograph of a young girl wearing mourning ribbons and holding a photograph of her father could symbolize the wide-spread and lasting losses …

Caught Our Eyes: Better with Butter

September 6, 2012 by Kristi Finefield

Reading the caption for a photograph can sometimes change every assumption made at first glance. One word in the title of this photograph shifted my entire view, and definitely caught my eye. Look at the image yourself, and then read the full title as it was written on the back of this stereograph card. The …

Child Labor Photos — What Do Children See?

August 31, 2012 by Barbara Orbach Natanson

Okay. I admit it. I put my children to work this summer. Recently, when doldrums threatened, I asked them to take a look at the Library’s National Child Labor Committee (NCLC) photographs online, choose some they found of interest, and tell me why. Working as an “investigative photographer” for the NCLC between 1908 and 1924, …