THE POWER OF PHOTOGRAPHY

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THE LIBRARY
THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS SHOP offers many items drawn from
the Library’s rich photographic collections.
PHOTO CREDIT
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THE LIBRARY
GENEROUS DONATIONS FROM PRIVATE AND
PUBLIC DONORS ENHANCE THE LIBRARY’S
PHOTOGRAPHIC RESOURCES.
Library of Congress collections—including
visual images—are the product of more than two
centuries of collaboration between the Congress,
an international community of creators and
donors and the people of the United States.
“Facing Change: Documenting America”
Product # 211071659
Price: $60
This collection of images by award-winning
photographers tells the story of today’s America.
“The Forgotten Fifties”
Product # 21107047
Price: $29.99
Drawn from Library’s collection of Look
magazine photographs, these images
capture the 1950s.
Camera Lens Tumbler
Product # 21509681
Price: $16.95
A telephoto lens inspired this 10-oz.
tumbler.
“Great Photographs from the
Library of Congress”
Price: $0.99
More than 700 images from the Library’s
photographic collections are included in this
e-book.
MORE INFORMATION | Order online: loc.gov/shop | Order by phone: 888.682.3557
The Photographs of Esther Bubley
Price: $9.95
The “Fields of Vision” series covers the careers of
nine documentary photographers.
“Gardens for a Beautiful America”
Product # 21107153
Price: $79
This volume presents 250 color photographs
of urban and suburban gardens by Frances
Benjamin Johnston.
The copyright act of 1870 centralized all U.S.
copyright activity in the Library of Congress,
making the Library the sole repository of works
copyrighted in America. Creative works—
including photographs—deposited as part of
the copyright registration process became a rich
source of material for the Library’s collections.
In 1926, the Library acquired its first
photographs: two important groups of works
from the estates of influential Clarence White
and Gertrude Käsebier. Although the Library
had by this time amassed substantial holdings
in documentary photographs, these acquisitions
marked its recognition of their artistic value.
In the 1930s, the Carnegie Corporation provided
funds to establish at the Library a national
repository for photographic negatives of early
American architecture, now called the Pictorial
Archives of Early American Architecture. This
development encouraged one of the nation’s finest
garden and architectural photographers, Frances
Benjamin Johnston, to deposit her archive with
the Library. Johnston’s action set an important
precedent for donations of architectural
photographs by photographers, their families
and their sponsors, among them Gertrude
Wittemann, Theodor Horydczak, Joseph E.
Seagram and Sons, and Carol M. Highsmith.
In 1944, the combined photographic archives
of two landmark photographic documentation
projects carried out successively within
two federal agencies—the Farm Security
Administration (FSA) and the Office of War
Information (OWI)—were placed by executive
order under the administration of the Library of
Congress. The FSA-OWI archives provide an
unparalleled record of the everyday experience
of a broad spectrum of Americans in the period
1935-43.
During the 1960s and 1970s, Alice S. Kandell
photographed Sikkim, a Himalayan nation that
became part of India. Her donation of more
than 5,000 color slides and black-and-white
photographs provides a copyright-free resource
for researchers to study a vanishing culture.
In recent years, a gift from the Liljenquist
family has enriched the Library’s images of the
American Civil War. Their generous donation
of more than 1,300 ambrotype and tintype
photographs features high quality images
carefully selected for the telling details in facial
expressions, poses, weaponry and uniforms. The
Liljenquist Family Collection shows both Union
and Confederate soldiers during the American
Civil War. The emphasis on young enlisted men
and their families fills a major gap in the Library’s
documentation of this era.
Similarly, a recent gift of more than 250
photographs from the family of the famed
photojournalist CHIM (David Seymour) shed
light on another civil war. The collection enriches
the Library’s holdings with vintage and modern
prints showing many aspects of the Spanish Civil
War and life in Mexico after the war.
MORE INFORMATION
Donate Books and Other Materials
loc.gov/acq/donatex.html
202.707.0792
Inquiries to: gifts@loc.gov
Make a Gift to the Library
202.707.2777
loc.gov/donate
Photographer Alice
Kandell | Alice S.
Kandell Collection of
Sikkim Photographs,
Prints and Photographs
Division
26 LCM | Library of Congress Magazine
Nov ember/December 2016 | loc.gov/lcm 27