Description: Though photographs are accepted as subjective but ultimately faithful visual reproductions of reality, in many instances they don’t correspond to our experience. Pupils don’t regularly glint red, and people don’t transform into the streaked, evanescent smears we so often witness in photos. Yet we have no trouble accepting these inconsistencies, knowing that taking a picture of
Description: It is too hard to know everything that lives inside an archival collection. Join us in opening up some of our miscellaneous folders and discover what is inside!
Description: When a television channel asks to film our collections, we want to show them at their best. Read how we accommodate media requests while keeping our collections safe.
Description: One of our recent projects, these photographic crayon enlargements, associated with founder of the National Zoo William Temple Hornaday, were made on sensitized paper that was then adhered to a linen “canvas” stretched around wooden frames. The paper had become brittle, and handling at some point in the past led to a number of punctures and tears through both the paper and the
Description: Research has been at the core of Smithsonian’s mission from the beginning, and sharing that research—through activities like publishing papers and data—is still key to fulfilling that mission for the “increase and diffusion of knowledge.”
Description: People everywhere are helping the Smithsonian Institution Archives make more of its collections deeply accessible through helping transcribe field books, journals, and diaries in our collections.