Description: [caption id="attachment_1872" align="aligncenter" width="263" caption="Eyeball 1, by loonyhiker, 2009."][/caption] At some point, everyday, I scan the Internet for stories about photography’s role and impact in culture. It turns out that in addition to all the images that are out there to be seen, there are surprising numbers of reports circulating about the power of those
Description: [caption id="attachment_3132" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Surveillance camera found in hallway, 2009, courtesy of Marvin Heiferman."][/caption]Note to readers: the "News in the Visual" blog posts referenced below have now been moved to the "What Gets Saved" category on THE BIGGER PICTURE (2/20/2011).Talk about ironic. The whole time I’ve been writing “News in the
Description: While we at the Photography Initiative like to argue that photography changes everything, it’s not always the case. On June 2nd, in a controversial ninth inning call, baseball umpire Jim Joyce denied Detroit Tigers’ pitcher Armando Galarraga a shot at making history for pitching a “perfect” game. Joyce—from his point of view behind first base—saw a batter hit a ball, make it
Description: Have a little fun with images from our collections that have been designated as open access. Anyone can now download, transform, share, and reuse millions of images as part of Smithsonian Open Access.
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: Each week, the Archives features a woman who has been a groundbreaker at the Smithsonian, past or present, in a series titled Wonderful Women Wednesday.
Description: Formal portrait photographs of scientists tend to preserve the stiffness of the moment, rather than capture the sitter’s personality. Perhaps that is the reason that candid photographs of celebrities like Albert Einstein stick in public memory.A 1931 photograph of three Nobel laureate physicists illustrates why we tend to remember the informal photos of scientists more than
Description: Today is the first day of winter. Not ready for the cold weather? It could always be worse. Ornithologist (and future tropical biologist) Neal Griffith Smith once wrote in his journal:"Still pensil [sic]. Well, I've got time and temperature to write. Just sharpened the pensil with a snow knife. We are parked smack in the middle of Southampton [Island] in a bloody windstorm. It
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