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: I couldn’t resist this collection of beautiful butterfly and creepy crawly engravings from BibliOdyssey this week. The Smithsonian has created a new Facebook page in honor of the 150th Anniversary of the Civil War, which we’ll regularly be contributing to. Hop on over and like the page! Apparently, it was not only illegal, but criminal for women to vote! Photos uncovered by
Description: [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="368" caption="Interior of Office of Printing and Photographic Service's cold storage vault, 1983, by Richard K. Hofmeister, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Record Unit 371 Box 4 Folder September 1983, Negative Number 2004-10338."][/caption] To be sure, the Smithsonian has a lot of photographs. Millions of them in hundreds of
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: I’ve been inspired by the snowflakes Wilson A. Bentley photographed through a microscope in the late 1800's ever since I first saw them in the Archives. Bentley donated 500 of his photographs to the Smithsonian in 1903 (you can read more about them in a post by Archives colleague, Courtney Esposito). The images capture nature at its most creative, mathematical, and elegant.
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