Words on Pictures

  42nd Street entrance to NYPL Central Bldg. where Central Circulation was located in the now named Celeste Bartos Forum. (top left)   Berenice Abbott's  Tempo of the City: II, Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street, Looking west from Seymour Building, 503 Fifth Avenue. 1937. Changing New York . NYPL Wallach Photography Collection.   Location, Location, Location: The NYPL Picture Collection as a Midtown Nexus The Picture Collection’s location at 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue put it at the center of a mid‑20th‑century image machine. Within a short walk were nearly all the industries that produced, circulated, and monetized images: newspapers and magazines, publishers, fashion houses and garment manufacturers, film and theatre studios, radio and later television networks, advertising agencies, and department stores. That geography is not incidental. It explains why the Picture Collection became, in Romana Javitz’s phrase, a “giant encyclopedia where pictures are consulted i...

  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...