Description: The Smithsonian Institution Archives will be celebrating African American History Month throughout February with a series of related posts on THE BIGGER PICTURE.
Description: John Waters’s 1998 movie Pecker is the coming-of-age story about a young man who can’t stop himself from taking pictures. “Man, everything always looks good through here!” Pecker exclaims, squinting through his viewfinder and throughout most of the film, it does. Photography is all about looking, and when it was time to invite someone to address the subject of voyeurism for
Description: Recently, I read some interesting news about the National Public Radio blog, “The Picture Show,” that explores photographic images and issues.
Description: [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="403" caption="Untitled, 2001, by Susan Watts, Digital photograph, National Museum of American History, Behring Center, Division of Information Technology and Communications, Courtesy of Susan Watts/New York Daily News, Image No. watts012."][/caption] Given how quickly photographs are spread by the news and social media, we’ve come to
Description: [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="350" caption="Fingers typing, by Simon Steiner, Creative Commons: Attribution 2.0."] [/caption] You know that sinking, then maddening feeling: you need to find something you’ve carefully put away, but can’t remember where you’ve stored it or how you characterized or labeled it. That common problem, when it’s blown up to institutional
Description: Bloggers on The Bigger Picture often describe how, in the course of their work, they come across intriguing archival objects and artifacts that trigger new insights into history. “Hands on” encounters with compelling evidence from the past are thrilling and can be provocative. But so can different sorts of encounters, including those that are driven by data, rather than
Description: Periodically—given the fleeting nature of life and the ubiquity of photographic imagery—it’s seems like someone’s always trying to hatch another ambitious image-based cultural project to prove that, despite our differences, we’re pretty all much the same.