clair055

Over on the Facebook page for this blog I’ve been posting a series of pictures this week I’ve simply sourced as “Library of Congress”, but the source goes much deeper than that.   The pictures are wonderful depictions of world scenes beginning in the 1890s through the 1930s. I’ve featured some here. The collection was put together by Frank and Frances Carpenter, a father-daughter team, during their world travels. The photos were used to illustrate his writings regarding travel and his world geography textbooks. I love to snap pictures myself. Over the last five years I’ve taken approximately ten thousand photos, myself, but over his lifetime no telling how many photographs Frank Carter produced. The Library of Congress collection contains 5,400 photos in albums, 10,400 loose photos, and 7,000 glass and film negatives.     Frank Carpenter was a journalist whose assignments took him many interesting places.   Being a writing myself, I love the fact that he took his...

Look at this picture.   Observe it very carefully.  You can click on the pictures to isolate them and make them a little larger Yes, you see soldiers proceeding up a street, but notice that you are actually looking at two images…..one from World War II and another from more contemporary times of the same location. A historical mix…of sorts. Think about the impact this could have on students of history.   Think about the connections that students could make between historical content and their surroundings. These pictures are the work of historical expert Jo Teeuwisse from Amsterdam.   This article from the Daily Mail states she began superimposing images from different time periods of the same location after finding 300 old negatives at a flea market in her home city depicting familiar places in a very different context. Here is a second example of her work....... Like Miss Teeuwisse I think this process of making war scenes or any historical image have meaning by l...

I found out this morning in a roundabout way the high school I graduated from will be hiring an art teacher for grades 4, 5, and 6 for the fall. The teacher will be employed full-time and will teach darkroom photography and printmaking to elementary classes. Yes, you read that right. Students in upper elementary grades will be learning darkroom photography and printmaking. First of all, I don’t have to tell you the economic climate of the United States over the last couple of years hasn’t exactly been agreeable to many in the teaching profession. Education has experienced delays with contracts, budge cutbacks, and programs have been pared down or cut out all together. Teachers have been required to take furlough days and in many instances positions have been deleted totally. Art and music have been hit especially hard in public school systems. Unfortunately, they always seem to be the first programs to go when there are money issues. I doubt there are very few public schools today teac...