Skip to main content

Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine and get a FREE tote.

Photography

Obscured by tarnish and miscellaneous defacements, the plates offered no trace of the images they had once held

Art Meets Science

Particle Accelerator Reveals Hidden Faces in Damaged 19th-Century Daguerreotype Portraits

Using an experimental X-ray fluorescence process, researchers mapped contours of the plates and produced digital copies of images previously lost to time

Photographer Harry Burton spent eight years documenting the excavation of Tutankhamun's tomb

Rare Photographs Put Focus on Egyptians Who Worked Alongside Carter to Excavate Tutankhamun’s Tomb

Harry Burton’s 3,400 snapshots document rich array of artifacts, unseen Egyptians who contributed to the Egyptologist Howard Carter’s great discovery

This photograph of a Japanese macaque, who isn't showing its top teeth in a fear grimace or forced into human clothing, would be considered up to snuff.

Stock Photo Agencies Agree to Pull ‘Unnatural’ Images of Primates

PETA had lobbied against images that perpetuate harmful misconceptions about the animals

The dethroning of Cecil John Rhodes, after the throwing of human faeces on the statue and the agreement of the University to the demands of students for its removal. The University of Cape Town, 9 April 2015

David Goldblatt, the South African Photographer Who Documented Life Under Apartheid, Has Died at 87

He did not rush to the frontlines of violent events, but instead photographed everyday scenes of racial discrimination

Standing Rock #2: Oil-pipeline protester Mychal Thompson in North Dakota, in November 2016. Her quote, in Navajo, reads, “To be of the people means you must have reverence and love for all of the resources and all of the beauties of this world.”

The Dispossessed

Pushed to the Margins, These Brave People Are Pushing Back

From the American West to the Middle East, the powerless face stark choices when confronted by the powerful

Among the colorful characters immortalized in the colorless daguerreotype medium are (clockwise from upper left): writer Henry Thoreau, Seneca leader Blacksnake, Navy Commodore Matthew Perry, mental health crusader Dorothea Dix, showmen P.T. Barnum and Tom Thumb, and actress Charlotte Cushman.

How Daguerreotype Photography Reflected a Changing America

The National Portrait Gallery brings the eerie power of a historic medium into focus

Researchers examined 400 photographs and 100 paintings dating between 1500 and 2015

Art Meets Science

Why Artists Have so Much Trouble Painting Lightning

A new study compares painted versus photographed depictions of lightning bolts’ offshooting branches

Harold Washington, the first black mayor of Chicago chats to Congressional candidate Charles Hayes. The woman on Washington's right, who was cropped out of the photo, is Carol Moseley Braun; she would go on to become the first African-American woman ever elected to the U.S. Senate.

The Archives of Historic Black Newspapers Are Going Digital

The Obsidian Collection is collaborating with Google Arts & Culture to ensure the journalism is preserved for many years to come

A young Walden resident, circa 1974, appears none too happy about being kept inside, or having her picture taken.

This Photographer Spent 46 Years Documenting the Vanishing World of Vermont’s Remote Northeast Kingdom

This Mawson & Swan camera owned by Winslow Homer, ca. 1882, was gifted to Bowdoin College Museum of Art by Neal Paulsen.

Exhibition to Bring Winslow Homer’s Long-Lost Camera—and Photography—Into Focus

After four years of research, the new medium’s impact on Homer’s art will be explored this summer at Bowdoin College Museum of Art

None

Future of Art

Future of Art

A new generation of artists is merging innovation with tradition to tell the important stories of our time

Cabral's image, now disqualified, was one of the winners of the 2017 Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition.

Contest Judges Rule Wildlife Photography Winner Used Taxidermic Creature

Brazilian photographer Marcio Cabral has been disqualified and can not enter the competition in the future

Clarence Clemons and Bruce Springsteen, Cleveland, Ohio by David Gahr, 1977

Ten Rarely Seen Springsteen Photographs That Capture the Exhilarating Power of The Boss

A new book reveals the work of David Gahr, who documented the music legend as he rose to worldwide fame

Cool Finds

These Rare NASA Photos Were Saved From the Trash

The 1,500 press images up for sale cover the agency’s manned missions from 1961 to 1972

USGS Shares Archival Photo of Rare Domed Lava Fountain

The unusual phenomenon occurred in the midst of a five-year eruption on Hawaii’s Kīlauea volcano

Armenia

Yerevan’s Mirzoyan Library Combines Cutting Edge Photography with Hypnotic Beats

American Farm Hand by Sandor Klein, 1937

How Portraiture Gave Rise to the Glamour of Guns

American portraiture with its visual allure and pictorial storytelling made gun ownership desirable

Camping in Badlands National Park is an otherworldly experience. Fall asleep beneath a canopy of stars.

22 Photos That Will Convince You to Travel to South Dakota Now

Stalin, Leningrad, USSR, 1978

Found: 30,000 Photographs by the ‘Russian Vivian Maier’

The photographer’s daughter stumbled upon the photo-films in the family attic

Can you spot Sheila?

Women Who Shaped History

How Smithsonian Helped Solve the Twitter Mystery of the Unknown Woman Scientist

Sheila Minor was a biological research technician who went on to a 35-year-long scientific career

Page 28 of 62