My latest Flickr album features photographs of signs from across the United States taken by Carol M. Highsmith from the late 20th century to the present day. In this blog post I’d like to focus on some older photos of signs taken for the Farm Security Administration in the late 1930s and early 1940s by John Vachon. Vachon is not as well-known as Dorothea Lange, Gordon Parks, or Walker Evans, but his output for the FSA is larger than the combined work of those three photographers. In 1940, in Woodbine, Iowa, Vachon photographed a deteriorating billboard. His two close-up images show the poster peeling away to show the billboard below: Billboard, Woodbine, Iowa. Photo by John Vachon, May 1940. http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/fsa.8a05710…
Tag: Jan Grenci
Toni Frissell Fashion Umbrellas
A while back I assembled an album for Flickr of images of umbrellas. More recently, I selected color fashion photos taken by Toni Frissell for another album. While gathering the Frissell images, I noticed that umbrellas and parasols appeared with some regularity. In some shots umbrellas shield their holders from the rain while in others parasols provide shade from the sun. Both were also used as props in fashion shoots. Here are some of the photos I found. First up, we see a young lady who appears in the fashion album and doubles her protection with an umbrella and sunglasses: Junior Bazaar. Photo by Toni Frissell, 1946. https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/tofr.00760 Are these beach umbrellas meant as protection against harmful rays or…
Foshay Fireworks
One image from my latest Flickr album on fireworks really caught my eye. It is a 1929 postcard of the dedication of the Foshay Tower in Minneapolis, Minnesota: Foshay Tower dedication fireworks as seen from the parade, more than a mile away. Photo by Vern Gunsolley, 1929. http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ppmsca.39495 The three day dedication event in August and September of 1929 included fireworks. When I first saw this postcard, I knew nothing of the Foshay Tower. Now I know a little bit more. Wilbur Foshay built the tower as a headquarters for his utilities company. He claimed that the design of the building was inspired by the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C. I like to see what connections I can make across…
Celebrating the Red, White, and Blue
In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson established June 14 as Flag Day, to commemorate the 1777 adoption of the “Stars and Stripes” as the national flag of the United States. Flag Day had been celebrated unofficially prior to 1916, as you can see in the first photo below. I recently gathered images from the collections of the Prints and Photographs Division for inclusion in a Flickr album featuring flags, which inspired me to expand my search and mark the occasion of Flag Day. The images shown here are all retrieved in a search in the Prints and Photographs Online Catalog (PPOC) using the search term “flag day.” The first two photos date to earlier Flag Day celebrations: Post Ofc. Dept. Flag…