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Walt Whitman photographed with a cardboard prop of a butterfly. Library of Congress

Walt Whitman Used Photography to Curate His Image – but Ended Up More Lost than Found

Whitman curated his image through photography, blending truth and artifice, but like today’s selfies, found more confusion than clarity.
by Trevin Corsiglia via The Conversation on May 29, 2025
Tamara Lanier

Harvard Relinquishes Photographs of Enslaved People in Historic Settlement

Tamara Lanier, who sued the school over daguerreotypes of her enslaved ancestors held in its museum, called the outcome “a turning point in American history.”
by Valentina Di Liscia via Hyperallergic on May 28, 2025
O-o-be' grins at the camera dressed in traditional clothing.

A Rare Smile Captured in a 19th Century Photograph

O-o-be' stood out in an era when smiles on camera weren't common.
by Ted Mills via Open Culture on March 30, 2025
A gloved hand reaches for a magnifying glass to view photos on slides.

Photos Are Disappearing, One Archive at a Time

We risk losing not just the images but also our ability to bear witness to history itself.
by Kira Pollack via Washington Post on March 10, 2025
Scrapbook page
Exhibit

Photographic Record

From photojournalism to portraiture, the exhibit explores what photos have meant to their creators, subjects, and viewers.
Harrison Williams holding a Camera.

Seeking Clues in Cabinet Cards

The poignant images, at once banal and intimate, in the Lynch Family Photographs Collection contain mysteries perhaps only the public can solve.
by April White via JSTOR Daily on February 17, 2025
Annie Mae Edwards and her children—Helen, Barbara, Johnnie Ruth, and Gene, with an unidentified woman.

A Forgotten Eyewitness to Civil-Rights-Era Mississippi

As resistance to integration mounted, Florence Mars bought a camera and began to photograph many subjects, including the trial of the killers of Emmett Till.
by Paige Williams via The New Yorker on November 3, 2024
Photo by Ralph Ellison of men standing by a street in New York City.

Ralph Ellison’s Alchemical Camera

The novelist's aestheticizing impulse contrasts with the relentless seriousness of his observations and critiques of American society.
by Jed Perl via New York Review of Books on October 17, 2024
A newspaper headline that reads "Ask Congress' Ban on Fake Pictures: White Slaver's Photograph Taken Apparently with President Taft Arouses Senator.""

The 1912 War on Fake Photos

Fake photographs of the US president sparked calls for regulation of analog photo editing.
by Louis Anslow via Pessimists Archive on September 24, 2024
A photograph of the battlefield at Antietam.
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A Remote Reality

Depictions of Antietam couldn’t possible capture the magnitude of the battle’s horror.
by Stephen Budiansky via HNN on September 3, 2024
Yellow amaryllis flower in its bulb.

The American Colony of Jerusalem’s “Wild Flowers of Palestine” (ca. 1900–20)

Photographs of wild flowers taken by photographers from a Christian utopian community that settled in East Jerusalem at the turn of the 20th century.
by Adam Green, Hunter Dykes via The Public Domain Review on July 24, 2024
Evelyn Nesbit Thaw dodging a camera, 1909.
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Overexposed

What happened to privacy when Americans gained easy access to cameras in the Gilded Age?
by Sohini Desai via HNN on July 2, 2024
An oblique view of Columbus Circle taken on Jan. 7, 1924 by the Fairchild Aerial Camera Company.

A Portrait of New York City by Air in 1924

Long before Google Maps, an intrepid inventor with three camera-equipped biplanes captured a groundbreaking view of Gotham in its Jazz Age glory.
by Thomas J. Campanella via Bloomberg on June 29, 2024
A photograph of the massacre perpetrated by Americans taken on the morning of March 8, 1906, on the eastern crest of Bud Dajo.

A Notorious Photo From a US Massacre in the Philippines Reveals an Ugly Truth

A shocking image of the 1906 atrocity survived but failed to become a humanitarian touchstone.
by Kim A. Wagner via New Lines on June 17, 2024

Photographing a Lost New York

When I moved to Lower Manhattan in 1967, I decided to make a picture of every building in the neighbourhood before the city knocked it down.
by Danny Lyon via New York Review of Books on April 25, 2024
Looking north over Union Square East, in 1901 or 1902.

When the NYC Subway Was Just a Dirt Trench

Rare photos from the early 1900s show the 120-year-old system’s pick-and-shovel beginnings.
by Christopher Bonanos via Curbed on April 3, 2024
1975 shot of a victim of police brutality. Photo by Corky Lee.

The Chronicler of Asian America: On Photographer and Activist Corky Lee

“We await our moment, in pursuit of the picture that Corky envisaged, a portrait of a community that is too large and too brilliant.”
by Hua Hsu via Literary Hub on March 28, 2024
The author’s mother, 1927.

Christina Sharpe and the Art of Everyday Black Life

In "Ordinary Notes," Sharpe considers Black culture “in all of its shade and depth and glow.”
by Omari Weekes via The Nation on December 13, 2023
Digitally altered portrait of a man in a suit with his face pixelated, framed by computer windows.

What the Doomsayers Get Wrong About Deepfakes

Experts have warned that utterly realistic A.I.-generated videos might wreak havoc through deception. What’s happened is troubling in a different way.
by Daniel Immerwahr via The New Yorker on November 13, 2023
A colorized photo of a woman in the 1850s.

The Past in Color

A short history of hand-colored photos during the Civil War era.
by Nick Sacco via Muster on August 29, 2023
Ferris wheel at the Chicago World Fair of 1893.

The Magic Lantern Man

At every stop, he enthralled audiences with a device called a “stereopticon.”
by David Cecelski via davidcecelski.com on May 1, 2023
19th century mug shots in a book

A Brief History of the Mug Shot

Police have been using the snapshots in criminal investigations since the advent of commercial photography
by Ellen Wexler via Smithsonian on April 3, 2023
Polar bear walks across melting ice in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
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Did One Photograph Change the Fate of the Arctic Wildlife Refuge?

What the political fight over a photo teaches us about the power of art, grassroots activism and images.
by Finis Dunaway via Made By History on March 3, 2023
A phot taken by Corkey Lee of an Asian woman dressed as the Statue of Liberty in front of a diamond store with a Statue of Liberty mural.

Corky Lee and the Work of Seeing

Lee's life and work suggested that Asian American identity did not possess—and did not need—any underlying reality beyond solidarity.
by Ken Chen via n+1 on January 25, 2023
Vintage photograph of two little girls sitting on a mid-century television set.

The Lost Art of Striking a Pose With Your TV Set

In midcentury America, the machine itself became a character.
by Lynn Spigel via Slate on August 14, 2022
Robert Adams, “Tract House, Longmont, Colorado,” 1973.

Robert Adams Looked Past Despair and Found the Truth of America

"To render the world more beautiful than it really is, as so many landscape photographers before Adams routinely did, is dishonest."
by Philip Kennicott via Washington Post on June 27, 2022
A horse trotting photogravure

The Murderer Who Made Movies Possible

When horses gallop, do all four hooves ever leave the ground at once? This episode of The Disappearing Spoon recounts the saga that led to the answer.
via The Disappearing Spoon on May 10, 2022
Victor Duhem, Woo Dunn and two other men (1910), posed in a portrait studio as if they were driving a car.

The Photos Left Behind From the Chinese Exclusion Era

The California Historical Society contrasts how Chinese people were portrayed in the press with the dignified studio portraits taken in Chinatown.
by Emily Wilson via Hyperallergic on March 13, 2022
Tintype photograph of a child supported by it's mothers arm.

The Hidden Mothers of Family Photos

The female image is ubiquitous on social media, yet when it comes to pictures of parents with their children many moms feel disappeared.
by Lauren Collins via The New Yorker on February 12, 2022
“Our first camp.” Vado de Piedra, Chihuahua, Mexico. January 26, 1921.

The Photo Album That Succeeded Where Pancho Villa Failed

The revolutionary may have tried to find my grandfather by raiding a New Mexico village—but a friend’s camera truly captured our family patriarch.
by Stacey Ravel Abarbanel via Zócalo Public Square on February 2, 2022
Photo of a man lying face down on a bed under a coat, and a sad woman sitting in a chair next to him. There is a hole punched out of the center of the photo.

The Kept and the Killed

Of the 270,000 photos commissioned to document the Great Depression, more than a third were “killed.” Explore the hole-punched archive and the void at its center.
by Erica X. Eisen via The Public Domain Review on January 26, 2022
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