Happy New Year!

 

LC-DIG-highsm-11570

Mummer’s Parade on New Year’s Day, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. By Carol Highsmith, 1/1/2011.

Last New Year’s Day, January 1, 2011, Carol Highsmith photographed the Mummers’ parade in Philadelphia, PA. This is just one of her gloriously colorful photos from that event in the Carol Highsmith Archive of the Library of Congress’s Prints & Photographs Online Catalog. Just follow the link above to her archive and enter “new year.”

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Same parade, 102 years before the one pictured above.

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LC-USZ62-58961. 1908

LC-DIG-ggbain-15029. ca. 1910 and ca. 1915

By Udo Keppler. LoC Summary: Illustration shows waiters Joseph G. Cannon and James S. Sherman turning away a man labeled “Average Citizen” and a woman at the “Hotel Prosperity” dining room because all the tables have been reserved; there are signs on the tables that read “Reserved for Wool Interests, Reserved for Coal Trust, Reserved for Steel Trust, Reserved for Senator Aldrich and Party, Reserved for Cold Storage Interests, Reserved for Sugar Trust, Reserved for Ice Trust, [and] Reserved for Franchise Grabbers”. Illus. in: Puck, v. 66, no. 1713 (1909 December 29)

 

All Saints Day, All Souls Day, Day of the Dead

November 1 and 2, All Saints Day and All Souls Day, or in Mexico and other parts of the world, the Day of the Dead or Día de los Muertos, are the inspiration for this post featuring images from the Library of Congress’s Prints & Photographs Online Catalog.

Gran bola de garbanceras que, por ser muy pretensiosas, se volverán calaveras podridas y apestosas. LC-DIG-ppmsc-04553

Calavera del drenaje. El mérito día de finados todos los que se restiraron por causa del drenaje. LC-DIG-ppmsc-04464

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A Heap of bones in the cemetery [Necropolis Cristobal Colon], Havana. LC-D4-21573

Decorated gravemarker on All Saints’ Day, New Roads, Louisiana. Note the beaded ornament, which is made of wire and beads. Photo by Lee Russell, 1938. LC-USF33-011892-M4

Statue on grave in Cities of the Dead, New Orleans, Louisiana. Photo by Carol Highsmith.  LC-DIG-highsm-04806

Mexico, mummies in basement of church, Mexico City, between 1908 and 1919.  LC-DIG-npcc-19740

Football!

Fall football images from the Library of Congress, leading off with two by Carol Highsmith:

Head coach Gene Chizik leads the Auburn Tigers football team onto the football stadium for the 2010 Auburn-South Carolina game, Auburn, Alabama. LC-DIG-highsm-11541

And if I have a shot of Auburn University, I need one of the University of Alabama, as well:

University of Alabama football game, Tuscaloosa, Alabama. LC-DIG-highsm-06883

Football and cars seem to have always gone together. This picture was taken in 1939 by Marion Post Wolcott:

Cars parked along the highways on day of Duke-Carolina football game, near Duke University Stadium. LC-USF34-052649-D

Who would think this a picture taken in the stands at a football game?

Ethel Roosevelt, in stands at football game. LC-DIG-ggbain-03024

I can’t decide if this looks like fun or just stupid:

Washington Redskins start training. Washington, D.C. Aug. 28. He-man exercise took the place of calisthenics today as the Redskins, Washington's entry in National Professional Football League, started training. The boys "flying thru the air" are, left to right: Millner (Notre Dame), Rentner (Northwestern) and Peterson (West Virginia) Wesleyan) 8/28/37. LC-DIG-hec-23282

Nothing much has changed since Frank A. Nankivell drew this illustration for the cover of the November 14, 1906 Puck magazine of  “the sun wearing a football helmet, beaming rays onto a football shaped planet that shows a stadium with fans in the grandstands and a football game in progress; also shows, in the background, an outline of a young woman’s head.”

The college world. LC-DIG-ppmsca-26112

From the Highsmith Archive: Cuba, Part 2

Of the 416 photographs of Cuba in the Carol M. Highsmith Archive at the Library of Congress, a number are images of art in public places, from amateur murals to sculpture to funerary statues. Here are some examples.

Credit line for each photograph should read: The Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Mural showing the Cuban flag and Che Guevara. LC--DIG-highsm-06012

Dragones Street, in the Chinatown section of Havana, Cuba. LC-DIG-highsm-06070

From the Carol M. Highsmith Archive: Havana, Cuba

Early in 2010, before arriving in Alabama to document life in that state in the early 21st century, photographer Carol Highsmith added to her archive at the Library of Congress 416 photographs of contemporary Havana, Cuba. Her subjects include 16th century Morro Castle and Castillo de la Real Fuerza,  and  interiors and exterior views of well-preserved, palatial buildings, e.g. the nation’s capitol (“El Capitolio”), alongside examples of deteriorating buildings bearing remanants of their former architectural grandeur. In a second post I’ll show you examples of her photos of public art in Havana.

Credit line for each photograph should read:

The Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Havana, Cuba. LC-DIG-highsm-06188

Castillo de la Real Fuerza, Havana, Cuba. After Havana was destroyed in 1555 by the French pirate Jacques de Sores, the Spanish Crown built a more solid fortress to replace the original, ineffectual tower known as La Fuezza Vieja. In 1558 they began work on Castillo de la Real Fuerza. It was completed in 1577. There is a moat that surrounds the fortress and a drawbridge leading the to main building. It was restored in 1963 and is a museum. LC-DIG-highsm-06057

One Down, 49 To Go: Carol Highsmith’s Images of Alabama Now Online at the Library of Congress

I first wrote about Carol Highsmith two years ago when I asked, Is Carol M. Highsmith the Most Generous Artist of Our Time? after coming across her archive at the  Library of Congress’s Prints and Photographs Online Catalog and learning that eventually she will have provided the public an estimated 100,000 images for their personal, educational, or commercial use — all for the price of a credit line.

Then last year I told you Carol Highsmith was in Alabama, working on a project for the Library of Congress, the 21st Century America Collection. Her goal is to document in digital images life in each state so that future generations will have an idea of what America was like in the first decades of this century. She was able to get going on this project because of the generosity of businessman and philanthropist George F. Landegger, who funded the Alabama collection.

Carol spent much of 2010 traveling over 20,000 miles up, down, across, and around the state of Alabama, and now the George F. Landegger Alabama Library of Congress Collection is completed and up for your viewing at the Library of Congress.

Now Carol is hard at work with the 21st Century America Foundation, Inc., a “priority initiative” of the Library of Congress, looking for funding to get to work on her next state. Which one remains to be seen, but I’ll let you know as soon as I can. Meanwhile, time for the pictures.

Credit lines for each of these public domain images should read: The George F. Landegger Collection of Alabama Photographs in Carol M. Highsmith’s America, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

The Alabama Theatre was built in 1927 by Paramount Studios in Birmingham, Alabama as a showcase for Paramount films.

Dauphin Island, Alabama