In Search of True Color: Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky’s Flawed Images

By Erica X Eisen

Archived amid Prokudin-Gorsky’s vast photographic survey of the Russian Empire, we find images shot through with starshatter cracks, blebbed with mildew, and blurred by motion. Within such moments of unmaking, Erica X Eisen uncovers the overlapping forces at play behind these pioneering efforts in colour photography. more

The Kept and the Killed

By Erica X Eisen

Of the 270,000 photographs commissioned by the US Farm Security Administration to document the Great Depression, more than a third were “killed”. Erica X Eisen examines the history behind this hole-punched archive and the unknowable void at its center. more

Photographing the Tulsa Massacre of 1921

By Karlos K. Hill

On the evening of May 31, 1921, several thousand white citizens and authorities began to violently attack the prosperous Black community of Greenwood in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Karlos K. Hill investigates the disturbing photographic legacy of this massacre and the resilience of Black Wall Street’s residents. more

Stuffed Ox, Dummy Tree, Artificial Rock: Deception in the Work of Richard and Cherry Kearton

By John Bevis

John Bevis explores the various feats of cunning and subterfuge undertaken by the Kearton brothers — among the very first professional wildlife photographers — in their pioneering attempts to get ever closer to their subjects. more

The Quirky, the Artful, and the Unexpected: Historic Photographs of Life in Australia

By Dr. Elycia Wallis

MUSEUM VICTORIA - Dr Elycia J Wallis, Manager of Online Collections, presents a few fascinating glimpses of late-19th- and early-20th-century Australia, and the photographers who documented its inhabitants. more

Tempest Anderson: Pioneer of Volcano Photography

Pat Hadley, Sarah King, and Stuart Ogilvy

THE YORKSHIRE MUSEUM - Pat Hadley, Sarah King and Stuart Ogilvy present a fascinating selection of photographs from the collection of Tempest Anderson, the pioneering Victorian volcanologist. more

Autochromes from the Te Papa Collection

By Lissa Mitchell

MUSEUM OF NEW ZEALAND TE PAPA TONGAREWA - Lissa Mitchell, Curator of Historical Documentary Photography, explores the work of three photographers creating autochromes in early 20th-century New Zealand. more

Armenians and Armenian Photographers in the Ottoman Empire

By Julia Grimes

GETTY RESEARCH INSTITUTE - Julia Grimes introduces a fascinating selection of images from the Pierre de Gigord Collection detailing Armenian life in the 19th-century Ottoman Empire, many from the studio of Armenian photographers Pascal Sebah and the Abdullah Frères. more

Cabinet Card Photographs from the Harvard Theatre Collection

By John Overholt

HOUGHTON LIBRARY, HARVARD UNIVERISTY - John Overholt shines a spotlight on a few examples from the eclectic lot of cabinet card photographs found in the Harvard Theatre Collection, a series of images which are currently making their way onto Wikimedia Commons courtesy of the Wikipedian in Residence scheme. more

Canada Through a Lens: the British Library Colonial Copyright Collection

By Dr. Phil Hatfield and Andrew Gray

THE BRITISH LIBRARY — Phil Hatfield and Andrew Gray kick off our brand new Curator’s Choice series by taking a look at the fascinating array of photographs in the British Library’s Canadian Colonial Copyright Collection. more

The Snowflake Man of Vermont

By Keith C. Heidorn

Keith C. Heidorn takes a look at the life and work of Wilson Bentley, a self-educated farmer from a small American town who, by combining a bellows camera with a microscope, managed to photograph the dizzyingly intricate and diverse structures of the snow crystal. more