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: Artists are often among the researchers who comb through archives in search of inspiration and content. A few years back in 2008, an encyclopedic exhibition, Archive Fever, presented at the International Center of Photography in New York, presented works by leading contemporary artists who have made active use of archival images, documents, and methodology to explore the ways
Description: [caption id="attachment_3320" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="The Haggard Family II, February 2005, courtesy of Sandy Puc’ and the Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep Foundation."][/caption] When we began work on click!, it seemed obvious that somehow, someway, we’d have to find someone to explore how photography impacts our encounters with death. Many writers about
Description: At SPI, we were sad to learn that Jessie Cohen died earlier this week. Jessie was one of the photographic mainstays at the Smithsonian; she started working at the Smithsonian National Zoo in 1979, photographing animals, their living quarters, and behind-the-scenes events for exhibition, education, and marketing purposes. In addition, Jessie also managed the Zoo’s exhibition
Description: A couple of years ago, in the process of curating Now is Then, an exhibition for the Newark Museum, I spent some time researching and thinking about the content, meaning and sequential lives of snapshots. Since their introduction in the late 19th century, inestimable numbers of those small, but powerful pictures have been made, looked at and saved—at least for a while.
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.