Description: Since The Bigger Picture began in early 2009, I’ve written a number of posts about what might be called camera traps, situations where cameras are installed to collect evidence of one kind of unusual or unwanted behavior or another. Red light cameras are a controversial example; across the country and on an almost daily basis, local municipalities and motorists argue about
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="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: Recently, I read some interesting news about the National Public Radio blog, “The Picture Show,” that explores photographic images and issues.
Description: [caption id="attachment_1085" align="aligncenter" width="400" caption="President Barack Obama and health care executives leave the State Dining Room of the White House following a press statement May 11, 2009. Official White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson."][/caption] A few days ago, watching TV and seeing Barack Obama face yet another gaggle of photographers and
Description: Traditionally, when families gather for end-of-the-year holiday events, reminiscences are shared, new photos and videos get made, and/or old snapshots, home movies, and memories resurface. And while most family narratives are revisited in intimate settings, around kitchen tables or in living rooms, a handful may reach broader audiences, through one set of circumstances or
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="313" caption="Georgia O'Keefe at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (HMSG) with Rene Magritte's sculpture "Delusions of Grandeur," 11 November 1977, by Richard Farrar, Photographic print, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Record Unit 371 Box 2 Folder December 1977, Negative Number: 92-1789."][/caption] It is always fascinating
Description: Look at enough photographs and it’s inevitable that, at some point, you’ll find yourself pondering mortality and photography’s relationship to death. Because the medium so effectively captures fragments of lives, events, and data that have come and gone, you’re always looking at and trying to make sense of something that’s over, finished, part of the past. Writers—particularly
Showing results 13 - 24 of 42 for Smithsonian (Television program)