Words on Pictures

  I am honored to announce that the electronic edition of the Archives of American Art Journal’s Spring 2025 issue containing “Pictorially Yours”: The Correspondence of Joseph Cornell and Romana Javitz, is now at the University of Chicago Press. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/735900 Written by myself and Diana Kamin, the essay explores the influence of visionary librarian Romana Javitz on the work of artist Joseph Cornell. Javitz was superintendent of the New York Public Library’s Picture Collection, a comprehensive image repository used by working artists and designers, from 1928 to 1968. Cornell, who is most well-known for his surrealist box constructions and collages, was a long-time user of the Picture Collection and a close confidant and admirer of Javitz. The essay draws on correspondence from the Cornell papers at the Archives of American Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Cornell Study Center, and the privately held Javitz estate, as ...

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...

The Language of the Public "The thing is I decided that the classes of the John Cotton Dana classification just could not serve an artist public, or a general public...  so the thing is that I became convinced that an A-to-Z file would not serve  the public. That a simple alphabetic arrangement, such as Newark had, did not  group the material logically from its visual contents.  I decided then that the only thing to do would be to begin recording the language of the public in asking for the pictures, and that was begun as soon as I took over. Since there was no catalog of subject headings available, there was no catalog of subject headings at all by the way, since there was no catalog when the borrower came in he used his own language, and that language could be analyzed and those (became) headings.  At first it was used to show the trends and needs to guide the buying. Then it became obvious to me that unless we set up a subject heading scheme based on the lan ...

Marion . Subject heading: Curiosity. engraving, ca. 1850. Stahlstich v. Carl Mayer’s Kunst-Anstalt in Nürnberg. The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Picture Collection, The New York Public Library. Curious? For the nominal cost of $4.99 you can get the ebook Words on Pictures: Romana Javitz and the New York Public Library's Picture Collection.  Covering the years 1916 to 1965, Words on Pictures is an excellent resource for the study of the use and dissemination of printed visual resources during of the age of photo-mechanical reproduction.   The story of the Picture Collection cannot be told without the story of Romana Javitz (1903-1980) who was head of the Picture Collection from 1928-1968. A pioneering librarian whose career spans the rise of print media, cinema and the mass circulation of illustrated magazines and newspapers across the globe. In three interviews included in the publication Javitz reveals a mastery of the semantics of...

    Newsstand, 32nd Street and Third Avenue, Manhattan. (1935). Berenice Abbott (1898-1991) The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library. Retrieved from http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47d9-4f7ea3d9- e040-e00a18064a99 Image ID 482798 By 1941 Romana Javitz was at the top of her field and was known world-wide as an authority on the use of pictorial materials. Many institutions, cultural organizations and corporations began clamoring for guidelines to organize their own burgeoning collections of visual materials.  So i n 1941, NYPL director Harry M. Lydenberg approached the Carnegie  Corporation for funds to allow Javitz time off from her regular duties to craft a  manual for the classification and arrangement of picture collections. In order to  proceed, Javitz, writing to Franklin F. Hopper, who succeeded Lydenberg as director i n 1941, insisted that she would need to ...

Reading war news aboard streetcar. San Francisco, California. 1941.  John Collier.  The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York  Public Library. Pictures at War Did you know that the New York Public Library's Picture Collection was a key resource for the Armed Forces during World War II? Here is an excerpt from the Annual Report for 1943: "The enemy loomed large as the most popular subject in picture requests during the year. Since a soldier is taught to bayonet the enemy and not some undefined abstraction, he must learn to recognize that enemy; a bombardier must be able to visualize the appearance of the factory which is to be his target; a designer of camouflage must have the specific knowledge of the shape of forests in the battle area as seen from the air. War leaders require pictorial surveys preceding decisions of strategy and action. Direct information for the use of the Army, Navy and Marine Corps was...

  NYPL Picture Collection Source Files   Words on Pictures: Romana and the New York Public Library’s Picture Collection .  edited by Anthony T. Troncale. New York:  Photo | Verso Publications, LLC , 2020.    ISBN 978-1-7346409-0-8 (hardcover)   Identifiers ISBN    978-1-7346409-1-5 (ebook) Picture Collection Source Files The Picture Collection began sourcing their files soon after Javitz became its Superintendent in 1929.  If an illustration was clipped from a book or portfolio the plate would be assigned a Source Number which would lead you back to a catalog card listing its provenance, bibliographic information, or if it was a gift or purchase.  Today this source file index and its accompanying index to periodicals that have been clipped are valuable research tools. Courtesy, New York Public Library, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs. Picture Collection. #photography, #visual art...