Photos from the Library

Wow! The Library of Congress (LOC) has a blog. Who knew?

Who cares?, you may ask. Well, check this out: Meanwhile, About Those Abraham Lincoln Inauguration Photos by Matt Raymond 01/18/08. The LOC just identified three photos as definitely being from Abraham Lincoln's second inaguration. Here's one of them:


Now, not being a neo-Confederate Mike Huckabee fan or anything, I think that's pretty cool. There are more links at this 01/16/08 news item. The other two that were just confirmed as Lincoln inaugural photos are stereographs, two side-by-side photos meant to be viewed in a stereoscope to create a 3D effect.

The LOC has other Abraham Lincoln stuff available online. Having searched online for things at the LOC Web site, I can say from experience that there is lots of good stuff there for historical research. But the search functions kind of suck. It requires some patience.

Here's a print of Lincoln's last reception:


But the LOC is making progress. They just this month initiated a Flickr project to make some of their treasure trove of photos more easily available (Matt Raymond, My Friend Flickr: A Match Made in Photo Heaven 01/16/08). There they provide things like this "Rosie the Riveter" war worker photo:



The details on this one include Bransby, David,, photographer; Woman aircraft worker, Vega Aircraft Corporation, Burbank, Calif. Shown checking electrical assemblies; 1942 June.

I can get nostalgic about photos like this. Not that I was actually around in 1942, but still. This one reminds me of Steve Earle's song "The Kind":

Paint me a picture of a girl with a secret smile
Looking back at you 'cross the years through ancient eyes
You're standing there like an open door
'Cause she's seen it all before
That's the kind of picture I like
The kind that makes you sigh

I mean, except that she's not smiling. And you can't see her eyes. And she doesn't exactly look like the "seen it all before" type. But it made me think of the song anyway. Umm, she's more than a little attractive in this photo, so she probably has seen more than the guys hitting on her would like to think.

One thing to watch for in LOC photos is that a lot of them show the photo in a frame of some sort. So if you are using them for a blog post or something, you may want to crop them a bit to eliminate the frame, which I did on the war worker photo.

Here's a picture of me at the old homestead:


Okay, okay, it's really a picture of some guy in Houston in 1943. But you have to use your imagination sometimes! But you can see what I mean about the frame in that one. The middle sign on the upper right is for Coca-Cola. The other two are for something called Golden Age beverage, which I don't believe I've heard of before.

Last but not least, if this welder from 1943 is still around, I bet he's a John Edwards voter:


Tags: library of congress