Снимка: Pictures that Make Us Happy, Part 2

This Autumn we offer a sequel to a post from this past Spring featuring pictures that cheer Prints & Photographs Division staff.

This post’s contributors are all staff members in the Technical Services Section, who work hard to organize, describe, digitize and house for preservation the images in the collections, making it possible for you to access them through the Library of Congress online catalogs as well as in person in the Prints and Photographs Reading Room.

Cataloging Specialist Arden Alexander notes that “I like the contrast between the playful kittens and the ‘serious’ congressional office setting” in the image below.

Kittens crawling on Representative Peter Kostmayer in his congressional office. Photo by JH, 1991 June 26. http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ppmsca.38833

For Alexander the next photograph is pleasing for more personal reasons, as it brings to mind “church and town festivals from my childhood with their delicious baked goods.”

Array of pies for sale at the “Back to Church Sunday” festival, organized by the nearby St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, on the grounds of the New Hampshire capitol (or state house, as New Hampshirites call it) in Concord, New Hampshire’s capital city. Photo by Carol Highsmith, 2017 Sept. 17. http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/highsm.47320

Michelle An, Processing Technician, got a kick out of a paper doll set she found in the collections: “Any time I go to a used book store I always grab children’s books with paper doll cut-outs. The outfits are fun, especially when they include historical figures.”

Paper doll fashions issued by the Sunday Times-Herald Chicago. Chromolithograph by Shober & Carqueville, 1895. http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pga.08313

Karen Chittenden, a Cataloging Specialist and frequent traveler to destinations near and far, appreciates how some images from the collections allow her to live vicariously when she’s not on the road herself:  “I always feel happy when travel posters come my way. The posters are usually visually striking and make me feel like I’ve taken a quick trip to another place.”

Discover Puerto Rico U.S.A. Where the Americas meet. Silkscreen poster by Frank S. Nicholson, between 1936 and 1940. http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ds.08068

See America Welcome to Montana. Silkscreen poster by M. Weitzman, between 1936 and 1939. http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ds.08249

Our Technical Services staff do so much to make researchers (and their co-workers!) happy by enabling access to our varied collections; we’re glad that their daily close contact with the pictures regularly fosters their own good cheer.

Learn More:

• Read the previous “Pictures that Makes Us Happy” blog post.
• View more travel posters from the Work Projects Administration (WPA) Poster Collection.
• Learn about the thousands of travel posters in the Prints and Photographs Division through the collection overview: Around the World with the Library of Congress Poster Collection: An Overview of Travel Posters.
• Browse some images from the CQ Roll Call Collection where Arden Alexander found her kitten-draped member of Congress.
• Peruse the abundance of pie-related images from the Carol M. Highsmith Collection.

 

Autor: Melissa Lindberg
Published on October 10, 2018 at 05:17PM