Demonstrators opposed to the ERA in front of the White House. Warren K. Leffler. 1977 Feb. 4. Prints and Photographs Division. LC-U9-33889A-31/31A. bibliographic record
The U.S. News & World Report Magazine Photograph Collection (USNWR) (1,000,000 photographic negatives and 45,000 contact sheets, 1952-86) offers researchers visual documentation for more recent
American history that is not comprehensively covered in other Prints and Photographs Division holdings. Images cover:
political events and figures, including civil rights and women's rights marches and demonstrations
social and economic trends such as school desegregation, urban and industrial expansion, consumerism, and tourism
some popular culture developments, including the incorporation of television into American family life
As a sample of the range of ways in which women appear in the collection, browsing the files for the months of January and
February 1962 yields images of:
a Women's National Press Club dinner for Congress
a woman in rather brief costume modeling with a convertible at an auto show
African American singer Grace Bumbry rehearsing for her performance at the White House
women (and men) attending a Young Republican Leadership training school
women working in the booming aerospace industry in Florida, and shopping or attending high school in the rapidly developing
surrounding area
a young woman being admitted to George Washington University
a woman walking on a dark Washington, D.C., street
The last set of images (LC-U9-7491) demonstrates the research that is sometimes necessary to understand the content and context
of images from photojournalism archives, where written documentation is frequently sparse. The caption on the contact sheet
folder merely notes that the photographs were made for a “Washington crime story,” but it does not indicate whether the woman
represented a victim or a perpetrator. The neighboring folder (LC-U9-7490), containing photos from the same assignment, provides
little added illumination, as it is captioned simply, “Washington, D.C. after Dark.” The published volumes of U.S. News & World Report that are accessible in the Prints and Photographs Reading Room enable the researcher to place
the image in the context of the accompanying story, which compared crime rates in different cities. The image of the woman
appeared as an allusion to citizens' vulnerability to crime, alongside text discussing the capital city's high crime rate
at the time. Correspondingly, the images in the U.S. News & World Report Collection offer a different kind of context. As
with Look Magazine Collection photographs, the substantial body of unpublished images offers clues to the editorial selection practices of the magazine.
The collection is housed in the Prints and Photographs Reading Room, where patrons serve themselves after a brief orientation.
The collection is organized by “job” number, which provides a rough form of chronological access to the images reproduced
in contact sheets (photographic prints that reproduce multiple negatives or 35-millimeter negative strips on a single sheet).
Subject access to the collection is provided by a card index developed by U.S. News & World Report staff. Entries in the index
include:
proper names
geographic places (states and most cities in the United States are found under U.S. —[state])
somewhat variable topical terms such as “People—Families” or “Negroes—Segregation”
There are few listings in the index directly under “Women,” so researchers must be creative in determining the settings and
situations in which they might see women depicted. Few images from the collection have been cataloged in the Prints and Photographs
Online Catalog.