Words on Pictures

From the Annual Report of the NYPL Picture Collection, July 1948 thru June 30, 1949 "The gamut of subjects asked for at the Picture Collection is astounding, particularly as neither idle curiosity, nor hobby spurred the requests. Pictures on widely separate subjects were necessary for a Television broadcast to materialize, for men's ties to be manufactured, for an architect to landscape a cemetery, for a surgeon to give a paper on stumps." ... "Television with its requirements for rapidly organized productions began to use this collection heavily. Several hundred changes of costume are prepared weekly, research must be done quickly and since there is no other source from which pictures on the whole history of fashion may be borrowed, these files became indispensable." Excerpt From: Anthony T. Troncale. Words on Pictures: Romana Javitz and the New York Public Library's Picture Collection. Television programs - CBS  Toast of the Town  with (front row, l to r) ...

Rothman's Pawn Shop, 149 Eighth Avenue. 1938. Berenice Abbott. Changing New York  #297.026   Words on Pictures: Romana Javitz and the New York Public Library’s Picture Collection , is an anthology of writings by Romana Javitz(1903-1980) that also includes three interviews in which she expounds on the use of pictures, especially photographs, as a tool for documentation. When pictures enter the Picture Collection for circulation they are analyzed for their subject content first and foremost. Subsequently, Javitz and her highly trained staff assign a subject heading that most defines the visible content that dominates or best illustrates what is in the image. With this approach, photographs to be used in the Picture Collection are often washed clean of the photographers or the publisher’s intent. Under this rubric a photograph clipped from a magazine or newspaper can have just as much impact as a fine platinum print if its content clearly defines or illustrates a subject or subje...