By William Craft Brumfield (NHC Fellow, 1992–93) The twentieth century in Russia has been a cataclysm of rare proportions, as war, revolution, famine, and massive political terror tested the limits of human endurance. The results of this assault on Russian culture are particularly evident in ruined architectural monuments, some of which are little known even … Continued
By William Craft Brumfield (NHC Fellow, 1992–93) Carpeted in boreal forests, dotted with lakes, cut by rivers, and straddling the Arctic Circle, the region surrounding the White Sea, which is known as the Russian North, is sparsely populated and immensely isolated. It is also the home to architectural marvels, as many of the original wooden … Continued
By Marianne Hirsch (NHC Fellow, 1992–93) Family photographs–snapshots and portraits, affixed to the refrigerator or displayed in gilded frames, crammed into shoeboxes or cataloged in albums–preserve ancestral history and perpetuate memories. Indeed, photography has become the family's primary means of self-representation. In Family Frames Marianne Hirsch uncovers both the deception and the power behind this … Continued
By Kate Flint (NHC Fellow, 2007–08; 2015–16) Flash! presents a fascinating cultural history of flash photography, from its mid-nineteenth century beginnings to the present day. All photography requires light, but the light of flash photography is quite distinctive: artificial, sudden, shocking, intrusive, and extraordinarily bright. Associated with revelation and wonder, it has been linked to the … Continued
By Elizabeth C. Mansfield (NHC Fellow, 2008–09) and H. H. Arnason Long considered the survey of modern art, this engrossing and liberally illustrated text traces the development of trends and influences in painting, sculpture, photography and architecture from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. Retaining its comprehensive nature and chronological approach, it now comes thoroughly reworked … Continued
By Jefferson Hunter (NHC Fellow, 1984–85) The complementarities and antipathies between photographs and literary texts allow the two arts to play off each other, denigrate or exalt each other, and sometimes reach a true collaboration that has more significance than either could achieve alone. Jefferson Hunter examines these symbiotic relationships in a highly original book that will … Continued
By William Craft Brumfield (NHC Fellow, 1992–93) At the turn of the twentieth century, the photographer Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky undertook a quest to document an empire that was undergoing rapid change due to industrialization and the building of railroads. Between 1903 and 1916 Prokudin-Gorsky, who developed a pioneering method of capturing color images on glass plates, … Continued
By Ewa Kuryluk (NHC Fellow, 1988–89)
When the US government forced American citizens of Japanese ancestry from their homes and into concentration camps in 1942, it pushed them into a binary world: Were their loyalties with America or with Japan? This black-and-white model concealed the varied, vibrant colors of Japanese American identities. An extremely rare cache of candid color photographs shot … Continued
All too often, historians use photographs simply to illustrate what they've already learned from other sources. But how can we use photographs as primary sources in and of themselves to understand the past? In this interactive webinar, we'll consider photographs as material objects, thinking about what their physical form can tell us about how they … Continued