Category: Photography

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African Images on the Web Photography

Images of Colonial Africa Digitized by the National Archives

The National Archives has digitised thousands of unique images of Africa and published them on Flickr this week. The collection spans more than 100 years of African history, from as early as the 1860s, including images of people, places, national and imperial events, conflict and natural disasters.

As some of the images have minimal context, the public is invited to contribute to these historical assets by adding comments and captions, filling in knowledge gaps.

The collection is available in Flickr. Via National Archives News.

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African American American Exhibitions Images on the Web Museums Photography

DuSable Exhibit Explores Visual Culture and the Struggle for Human Rights

The exhibition For All the World to See examines the influence of visual culture and images like that of Emmett Till in shaping and transforming the struggle for racial equality by showing… realities of segregation and racial violence, inspiring activists, and fostering African American pride and the Black Power movement.

This traveling exhibit will be open at the DuSable Museum of African American History in Chicago until May 16, 2011. A comprehensive online exhibition is also available.

Via the National Endowment for the Humanities.

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American Exhibitions Museums Photography

History Coming Home: a Preview of the National Public Housing Museum

History Coming Home at the Chicago Tourism Center Gallery…

reveals public policies, oral histories, and artifacts from public housing in cities from Chicago to Boston and New Orleans to Sacramento.  The core of this exhibition at the Chicago Tourism Center Gallery consists of a 1950s-style public housing apartment that visitors can walk through. Inside the 20 ft X 20 ft installation, a living room, kitchen, and bedroom filled with artifacts from public housing residents and a video capture various aspects of the public housing experience.

Alison Cuddy, host of WBEZ’s Eight Forty-Eight, recently toured History Coming Home with National Public Housing Museum Executive Director Keith Magee. You can listen to it here.

The exhibit includes photographs from the Chicago Housing Authority archives and the Chicago History Museum. It previews the opening of the National Public Housing Museum, a permanent home for the history of public housing in America, set to open in 2012. History Coming Home will be open until April 15, 2011 at the Chicago Tourism Center Gallery, 72 E. Randolph. Tours are available M-F, 11am-3pm and by appointment.

Via the City of Chicago’s Official Tourism Site.

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Photography

Photographing Archival Materials

Before embarking on a research trip, you might prepare to photograph materials in libraries and archives. It can be difficult to capture quality images of archival materials, especially in low-light situations. A recent guest post on ProfHacker details one way of stabilizing a digital camera, which includes using a clamp, articulated arm and wired camera remote as a sort of portable copy stand.

Keep in mind that some of the processes advocated in the article will not be allowed in all archives or libraries. Check with archives, museums or libraries before your visit to ask about policies; most will have specific requirements for equipment used in reading rooms. If you have questions about cameras or other photography best practices, please contact the VRC.

Via Derivative Image.

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American ARTstor Images by Subscription Photography

New Pre-Columbian Collection in ARTstor

ARTstor has partnered with the Visual Resources Collections at Skidmore College’s Lucy Scribner Library to digitize approximately 850 images of Pre-Columbian objects and sites from the Southwest United States, Central America, South America, Europe, and Egypt. These images were selected from a collection of over 8,000 slides created by alumna Moreen O’Brien Maser (Class of 1926). From 1938-1970, Maser traveled with her husband, Herman, to various archaeological sites and modern cities in the American Southwest, Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, Peru, Trinidad and Tobago, Greece, Italy, and Egypt. Of particular note are the Mesoamerican images, which provide documentary evidence for sites that have been more fully excavated and/or damaged due to environmental and human degradation since being photographed by the Masers more than 50 years ago.

To browse the Moreen O’Brien Maser Memorial Collection, click here.

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Images on the Web Innovative Technology Photography

Photographing the Atomic Bomb

Today NPR’s The Picture Show featured photographs taken by Harold Eugene Edgerton during the 1950s which captured the earliest moments of atomic explosions. As the NPR article explains:

After the war, EG & G, Inc. (Edgerton, Germeshausen and Grier Inc.) developed the rapatronic camera for the Atomic Energy Commission to record — specifically, in one take only — the beginning of nuclear explosions… The dangers of shockwaves and radiation required the camera to be placed 7 miles from the detonation site on a tower some 75 feet in the air. Exposure time was one-hundred-millionth of a second. The exposure time was so small that no conventional mechanical shutter could be used. A magnetic field was created around two polarized lenses that were rotated, permitting light to pass through an optical system.

An example of the rapatronic camera is pictured above. To see examples from the series of atomic bomb photographs by Edgerton, visit NPR’s article.

Categories
East Asian Photography Reviews

First Issue of Trans-Asia Photography Review

The first issue of the Trans-Asia Photography Review – a peer-reviewed, open access online journal devoted to the discussion of photography from Asia – is now viewable at http://tapreview.org. It features commentaries or articles by many distinguished scholars, including University of Chicago’s Wu Hung.

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Color Images on the Web Photography

Early Twentieth Century Russia, in Color

Between 1909 and 1912, “photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944) undertook a photographic survey of the Russian Empire with the support of Tsar Nicholas II. He used a specialized camera to capture three black and white images in fairly quick succession, using red, green and blue filters, allowing them to later be recombined and projected with filtered lanterns to show near true color images. The high quality of the images, combined with the bright colors, make it difficult for viewers to believe that they are looking 100 years back in time – when these photographs were taken, neither the Russian Revolution nor World War I had yet begun.”

These images are now owned by the Library of Congress, which acquired the glass plates in 1948. Digital reproductions are available online.

Via Boston.com’s Big Picture photography blog.

Categories
Design Photography

Cheers to the Weekend

Get caffeinated this weekend with a camera lens coffee mug. Just be sure not to mistake it for your actual camera lens!

Categories
Modern - Contemporary Photography

Final Roll of Kodachrome, Documented

The last roll of Kodachrome slide film ever manufactured has been developed and will be the subject of an upcoming National Geographic documentary. The roll was given to photographer Steve McCurry, who captured the iconic Kodachrome image “The Afghan Girl” for National Geographic in 1984 (pictured above). The content of the final roll is undisclosed, though it was revealed that the first and last images were taken in New York and the images in between, in India. Listen to NPR’s story on Steve McCurry and the retirement of Kodachrome on All Things Considered.