Description: [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="400" caption="Marey Wheel Photographs of Unidentified Model, with Eadweard Muybridge Notations, by Thomas Eakins, 1884, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden."][/caption] Please be aware that some of the photographs included in links within this post may contain graphic and emotionally disturbing material. Which are more powerful,
Description: [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="222" caption="In the City Where Nobody Cares, by unidentified photographer, 1910, National Museum of American History, Behring Center, Archives Center."][/caption] A couple of years ago, as soon as Google’s Street View application was introduced, it generated worldwide controversy. Ground-level photographic images, shot from cameras
Description: [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="237" caption="This is America...Keep it Free!, Dorothea Lange, 1942, National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center, Archives Center."][/caption] More cameras in more places. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the installation of red light cameras and the controversy surrounding their use that’s continuing to spread
Description: [caption id="" align="alignleft" width="251" caption="Photo of William F. Mack, Roentgenologist, by Margrethe Mather, 1922, National Museum of American History, Behring Center, Division of Information Technology and Communications"][/caption] Just how closely do radiologists look at what they’re supposed to be analyzing? Would knowing whose CT scans they were studying make
Description: [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="392" caption="Miss Gloria Smith (Wedding) Deluxe Wedding Album, June 24,1956, by Scurlock Studio (Washington, D.C.), Cellulose acetate photonegative, Scurlock Studio Records, ca. 1905-1994, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Call No. 0618.278269."][/caption] If events are heavily promoted as being once-in-a-lifetime
Description: [caption id="" align="alignleft" width="133" caption="Earth, 1971, Apollo 15, Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, Center for Earth and Planetary Studies"][/caption] The planets and outer space used to seem far, far away from our lives down on earth. But as this slideshow reveals, by the mid-twentieth century—with Ford Galaxies in our driveways, satellite-shaped barbeque
Description: [caption id="" align="alignleft" width="240" caption="I have no hours in the day to watch TV/games. Don't let life go by!!, by National Media Museum, Creative Commons: Attribution 2.0."][/caption] From 2002-2005, a unique archive of video tapes was compiled by the Center on Everyday Lives of Families (CELF) at UCLA, with the goal of studying a relatively new social
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="400" caption="Graduating class from The Calverton School, Huntingtown, Maryland, by unidentified photographer, 1977, National Museum of American History, Behring Center, Archives Center"][/caption] "It’s kind of a bummer when you look so beautiful and somebody has the same exact one as you," says a high school senior quoted in a recent
Description: [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="331" caption="14th Street and Broadway, NYC (man with goggles), 1947, by Louis Faurer, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of anonymous donors, 2007.40.61 "][/caption] Earlier this month, Google introduced the Beta and Android-based version of the new and, for some, startling photo-based search feature they’ve calling Google Goggles.