Description: [caption id="attachment_4140" align="aligncenter" width="296" caption="Auguste Deter, Alois Alzheimer's patient in November 1901, first described patient with Alzheimer's Disease, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons."][/caption] From the moment we began to conceptualize the content of click!, it became obvious that we’d need to investigate photography’s relation to memory from a
Description: [caption id="attachment_1356" align="aligncenter" width="251" caption="Tommy Dodgen, age 4, standing by the largest lamp in the world : Tampa, Florida, by unknown photographer, 1947, State Library and Archives of Florida, Commerce Collection."][/caption] The cover shot of Popular Science’s July issue, which focuses on the future of energy, uses some interesting new
Description: [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="350" caption="Beauty is forever, by Just Warr, Creative Commons: Attribution 2.0 Generic."][/caption] At THE BIGGER PICTURE, we often write about the challenges of maintaining the data in digital archives. But a recent article bundled in the informative daily arts newsletter compiled by Jeff Weiss—you can subscribe by sending a request
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: Back in December, I wrote a post about Emory University’s efforts to make the writer Salman Rushdie’s digital files available to fans, researchers, and interested parties. A couple of days ago, I came across an interesting report about a gathering, an “unconference,” that was sponsored by the University of Virginia’s Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, which
Description: I was reading one of Holland Cotter’s reviews of an art exhibition in the New York Times a couple of weeks ago, when I came across a description of a show that was about to close and wished I’d been able to see. At a space run by the Esopus Foundation, Bob Warner, a New York artist and optician, was opening, one box at a time, the cartons of material that another artist, Ray
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="aligncenter" width="448" caption="Temperance Parade, Church of the Nazarene, Medora, Illinois, photographer unknown, real-photo postcard, 1908, Courtesy of Luc Sante, 2009."][/caption] One of the thrills of seeing—when you stop to pay attention to it—is how complex and quickly the process of looking and making sense of what we see happens. According to
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
Description: [caption id="" align="alignleft" width="181" caption="Edmonia Lewis, National Portrait Gallery"][/caption] In Kodak and the Lens of Nostalgia (2000), Nancy Martha West describes how the company—marketing the first box cameras in the 1890s—aggressively targeted female consumers, hoping they’d “see photography not only as a necessary component of domestic life but as an integral
Description: [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="420" caption="Heard Museum Gift Shop, by Daniel Greene, Creative Commons: Attribution 2.0."][/caption] [caption id="" align="alignright" width="216" caption="Slide Carousel: Loading Slides into the Carousel 5, by rosefirerising, Creative Commons: Attribution 2.0."][/caption] How does photography change the ways we look and learn about
Description: When the names of certain cities are mentioned, photographic images of them pop into your head almost immediately. Washington = buildings on or near the mall. New York = skyscrapers of one sort or another. Paris = the Eiffel Tower. Tokyo = the Ginza shopping and entertainment district. With that thought in mind—and considering the multiple roles photography plays in shaping,
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