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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
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
James Baldwin at work on his novel “Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone," and smoking.

Refinding James Baldwin

A fascinating new exhibit focuses on Baldwin’s years in Turkey, the country that, in his words, saved his life.
by Doreen St. Félix via The New Yorker on December 28, 2024

Scenes of Reading on the Early Portrait Postcard

When picture postcards began circulating with a frenzy at the turn of the 20th century, a certain motif proved popular: photographs of people posed with books.
by Melina Moe, Victoria Nebolsin via The Public Domain Review on July 31, 2024
Aaron Douglas, “Still Life,” n.d.

The Harlem Renaissance Was Bigger Than Harlem

How Black artists made modernism their own.
by Susan Tallman via The Atlantic on June 14, 2024
Aaron Douglas, detail from painting Aspects of Negro Life: From Slavery to Reconstruction, 1934.

The Cosmopolitan Modernism of the Harlem Renaissance

The world-spanning art of the Harlem Renaissance.
by Rachel Himes via The Nation on April 9, 2024
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
Portrait of a girl wearing a red coral necklace.

The Labor of Polyps and Persons

The meaning of coral jewelry in nineteenth-century America.
by Michele Currie Navakas via Lapham’s Quarterly on July 12, 2023
Daguerreotype of a young woman, with her head resting on her hand.

In Love with a Daguerreotype

A nineteenth-century twist on love at first sight.
by Julia Case-Levine via Lapham’s Quarterly on May 15, 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
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
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
Man Ray's photograph "Noire et Blanche," featuring a woman whose closed eyes and pointy features resemble those of an ebony sculpture she holds.

Man On A Mission

A review of ”Man Ray: The Artist and His Shadows” by Arthur Lubow.
by Brooke Allen via The New Criterion on March 1, 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

Why So Many Guns on Christmas Cards? Because Jesus was ‘Manly and Virile.’

Muscular Christianity — with scriptural interpretations that can favor “stand your ground” over “turn the other cheek” — has a long tradition in the U.S.
by Peter Manseau via Washington Post on December 14, 2021
Artwork by Alanna Fields of an enslaved individual.

The Dark Underside of Representations of Slavery

Will the Black body ever have the opportunity to rest in peace?
by Latria Graham via The Atlantic on September 16, 2021
Female photographer standing behind camera, next to man in uniform holding suitcase.

Midwestern Exposure

Zooming in on the places where early women photographers could build a career.
by Kim Biel via Lapham’s Quarterly on September 14, 2021
Man kneeling in crowd in front of police

On Our Knees

What the history of a gesture can tell us about Black creative power.
by Farah Peterson via The American Scholar on September 7, 2021
Cover of amateur photography handbook

Say Cheese! How Bad Photography Has Changed Our Definition of Good Pictures

The changes in popular photography.
by Ben Marks via Collectors Weekly on July 28, 2021
A woman posing with an elk she shot.

A Woman’s Intimate Record of Wyoming in the Early Twentieth Century

Lora Webb Nichols created and collected some twenty-four thousand negatives documenting life in her small town.
by Sarah Blackwood via The New Yorker on July 18, 2021
Smithsonian anthropologist Kari Bruwelheide points out details in the sculptures depicting the faces of two enslaved African Americans who labored at Catoctin Furnace in the late 1700s or early 1800s

Faces of the Dead Emerge From Lost African American Graveyard

The bones of enslaved furnace workers tell the grim story of their lives.
by Michael E. Ruane via Washington Post on July 9, 2021
Building with a currogated tin facade and sign saying "Richard Perkins Contractor"

The Anti-Nostalgia of Walker Evans

A recent biography reveals the many contradictions of the photographer who fastidiously documented postwar American life.
by Rahel Aima via The Nation on June 8, 2021
Old photos of Civil War soldiers

Interrupted Sentiments: The Lost Letters of Civil War Soldiers

The incredible story of thousands of soldier photographs and letters that never made it home.
by Melissa A. Winn via HistoryNet on May 12, 2021
A "trick" photograph of a woman holding six heads

Snap Judgment

A brief history of trick photography.
by Kim Beil via Lapham’s Quarterly on May 6, 2021
Lee Miller

Photographer Lee Miller’s Subversive Career Took Her from Vogue to War-Torn Germany

She also acted as a muse to artist Man Ray, with whom she briefly led a relationship.
by Angelica Villa via Art In America on March 19, 2021
Colorized photograph of formerly enslaved family outside of their cabin

The Color of Freedom

This collection of colorized portraits transforms ex-slave narratives into freedom narratives in order to better remember the individuals who survived slavery.
by Lee Hedgepeth via Scalawag on February 5, 2021
Sergeant Major William L. Henderson and hospital steward Thomas H.S. Pennington of Twentieth US Colored Troops Infantry Regiment in uniform.

'Black Resistance Endured': Paying Tribute to Civil War Soldiers of Color

In a new book, the often under-appreciated contribution that black soldiers made during the civil war is brought to light with a trove of unseen photos.
by Nadja Sayej via The Guardian on January 27, 2021
The Oval Office as redecorated for President Biden

A Look Inside Biden’s Oval Office

The oval office looks different now that President Biden is its occupant.
by Annie Linskey via Washington Post on January 20, 2021
A social gathering in 1862

The 19th-Century Roots of Instagram

Social networks existed long before the invention of social media.
by Adrienne Lundgren via Library of Congress on December 14, 2020
A Black enslaved woman holding a white child.

The Visual Documentation of Racist Violence in America

Before and during the Civil War, both enslavers and abolitionists used photography to garner support for their causes.
by Mary Niall Mitchell via Black Perspectives on November 4, 2020
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