Description: One of the challenges of being a reference archivist is focusing on the inquiries received, while suppressing the bits of information you come across that may be of personal interest (the corner of my desk is occupied by an ever increasing list of topics I aspire to research further on my own time). Recently, however, a colleague who is familiar with my interest in rare and
Description: The Smithsonian Institution Archives recently digitized over 300 images of Washington, D.C. from the 1920s. Read more about the collection here, and check out the photographs, which are now available on Smithsonian Collections Search Center as well as on the Flickr Commons. Intern Amanda Kaufman writes about the collection, which she helped digitize this summer, below. How
Description: [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="420" caption="The Great Pyramid and the Great Sphinx, from "Egypt, Sinai and Jerusalem" Portfolio, 1858, Francis Frith"][/caption] The first examples of travel photography are almost simultaneous with the invention of photography itself. In 1841, following an extensive trip through the Middle East, wine merchant and early photographer,
Description: [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="349" caption="Washington, D.C. 1975, from the series Archaeological Series, 6 Inch Contour Gauge, 1975, by Kenneth Josephson, Gelatin silver print on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the National Endowment for the Arts, 1983.63.828."][/caption] In 1981, the Smithsonian American Art Museum (at the time it was named
Description: [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="237" caption="Georgia O'Keeffe, 1920, by Alfred Stieglitz, Photographic print, Archives of American Art, Local Number: AAA 440 (fr. 508)."][/caption] I confess, way back when as a student of American Modernism, I was never much interested in Georgia O’Keeffe. I was supposed to be. She was the lone, out-there, woman painter of America;
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.
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: Late in July, LENS, a New York Times blog that focuses on images and issues photographic, posted an interesting story by James Estrin. Magnum Photos, the legendary co-operative photo agency founded after World War II by photographers including Robert Capa and Henri Cartier Bresson, announced that to boost the visibility (and paid use) of the hundreds of thousands of images it
Description: [caption id="" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="Ralph Waldo Emerson, between 1860 and 1870, by J. W. Black & Co., Photographic print on carte-de-visite mount, Abbott Handerson Thayer and Thayer family papers, 1851-1999 bulk 1881-1950, Archives of American Art, Digital ID: 5677. "][/caption] From the beginning, photography upset conventional ideas about the relationship
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
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