Posts Tagged ‘history’
Here’s a heartwarming start to your week. Around 1971, the city of Troy, Michigan opened a new permanent home for their growing public library. To attract the interest of local youth the children’s librarian, Marguerite Hart, wrote to a number of notable individuals. She asked for a response for the children of Troy emphasizing the importance of libraries. To her surprise, a large number did.
She received responses from authors, politicians and even astronauts, which you can see listed and scanned here. Above is the simple yet beautiful response from Theodor Seuss Geisel, a.k.a. Dr. Seuss. After the jump is a creative response from Isaac Asimov as well as E.B. White. Click on the letters to see them larger.
This project couldn’t be more relevant right now. Evan Stremke‘s Invitation to An Assassination is a look at how a relatively routine occurrence happening to an individual can send a ripple throughout the world and history.
His posters are well thought out and eerily beautiful. Major kudos for the subtle symbolism (that you can see explained on the site) and an wonderfully executed, if not macabre, project.
I’m going crazy over these archival portraits of criminals in Sydney, Australia. They were taken between 1912-1948 and are part of the archives of the Sydney Police. I’m not sure if it was standard to shoot booking portraits like this at that time or not, but they remind me of another series from back in the day called Crooks Like Us that I posted about before. Whatever the case, I think the most jarring aspect of the photographs is how well dressed everyone is for being criminals. Oh the times they are a changing…
As humans, our ability to continually improve upon our own technologies is astonishing. 20 years to the day after the Russians launched the first human being in to space, the United States launched the first space shuttle, ushering in a new era of relatively easy space travel. Thirty years later, we are at a point at which space tourism is becoming a reality. Imagine where we will be in the next 20 years.
The problem with digging around the Library of Congress‘ collections is that you can easily spend hours doing it. Sometimes you’ll find amazing stuff and sometimes you’ll see nothing but old scanned paperwork. Today though, I found a ton of American Advertising from between roughly 1840 and 1875. The type alone is just beautiful, but the illustrations are something to gawk at as well. Hours lost or not, the Library of Congress is a treasure trove of inspiration today.
More great ads after the jump.
