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 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 …
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 …
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 …
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, …
What summer event filled with spectacle and circumstance, speeches and ovations, and capped by a balloon drop happens every four years? No, it’s not the Olympic Games; it’s political party convention time! These quadrennial events are the formal nominating process for the presidential and vice-presidential candidates. In addition to the serious work of nailing down …
Here’s a job that’s not for the acrophobic — painting the outside of the Capitol dome! In fact, this 1922 photograph from our National Photo Company Collection may bring on a bit of vertigo in our heights-sensitive readers when they realize how high up in the air this painter is suspended. If this thought hasn’t …
Even those of you who don’t feel as strongly about your morning cup of joe as I do can understand why this photograph would catch my eye! Just imagine the thousands of cups of coffee it could hold! The Bedford Coffee Pot no longer dishes out coffee along the Lincoln Highway in Pennsylvania, but it …
On Saturday July 28, the Library hosted its first Photography Meetup in the Great Hall of the Thomas Jefferson Building. We invited photography enthusiasts to come and take part in a scavenger hunt guided by a selection of photographs Carol M. Highsmith made for the Library of Congress. The Meetup was a real success, and …
I love the Olympics. I love the competition, the ceremonies, the sportsmanship. My earliest personal experience with a festival of games was on a pretty small scale: the annual Field Day in grade school. My favorite event wasn’t the water balloon toss or the three-legged race. It was the ultimate battle between classes, Tug of …