Words on Pictures

  Words on Pictures: Romana Javitz and the New York Public Library’s Picture Collection  won an honorable mention in the  Photography Network's annual photo book prize!  It will be announced at the PN annual convention in Washington D.C. October 13-15. Honored and gratified that the publication is getting some academic attention.  Thank you Photography Network and long live Romana Javitz! Words on Pictures: Romana and the New York Public Library’s Picture Collection .  edited by Anthony T. Troncale. New York:  PhotoVerso Publications, LLC , 2020.    ISBN 978-1-7346409-0-8 (hardcover)   Identifiers ISBN    978-1-7346409-1-5 (ebook) #photography, #visual arts, #photographers, #visualresources, #librarians, #documentation, art libraries, art history, theater, #NewYorkCity, #FarmSecurityAdministration, #LibraryofCongress, #visualliteracy, Sol Libsohn, #illustration, #advertising, #Troncale, publishing, children's, art, photo, #WPA, #FederalArtProject, #circulation, #NewYorkPublic

 The Picture Collection began a Source Card file in 1929, soon after Romana Javitz became supervisor. It is still maintained today and is a rich resource, not just for tracing the original maker of a print or photo found in the files but also from an historical perspective .  In addition to provenance, the cards reveal many of the addresses of the contributors, some only blocks away from the Picture Collection at 42nd and Fifth Avenue.   Here is just a small sample from A to M of the variety of Source Card files documenting the Journals, Magazines and Serials that were clipped for circulation. Capitalized alpha indicators were written on the clipped images for tracing the source.   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) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~ The Picture Collection and the American Scene  Romana Javitz was a gifted writer and made even annual reports interesting and persuasive. Here she is writing on the events of 1933, which saw a turn towards all things American: “Although as usual the roots of the requests were in the news item and the current fad, an analysis of the year’s work with the public shows a marked shift towards concentration on the American scene. In former years, designers asked for foreign sources and old period designs. To-day, the American artist finds his own background one of flowing richness hardly as yet tapped. Scenes of early American historical events, early views of American cities, the beginnings of the great industries, every graphic element of the natural resources. Ohio flatboats, Charleston balustrades, corncribs, cowboys, gold mining, cotton, the “Don’t tread on me” flag, filling stations, samplers, and silos- were used as a basis for fresh design. Numerous public projects assigned to ar

New York Times announces opening of the NYPL Picture Collection.   The New York Times was one of the first newspapers to announce the opening of the Picture Collection in 1916 and indeed it was an early user of its files. The New York Times was  famous for its pictorial supplements, published in rotogravure, the high point of photo illustration for its time. Shown here after the article is a page from one of the supplements celebrating Shakespeare's 300th Anniversary of his birth.  Following the article is a photograph of a rendering of Shakespeare, ca. 1870,  in the current Picture Collection files.  ~~~~~ Excerpts from  New York Times, June 4, 1916 “Pictures as well as books may now be borrowed from the New York Public Library which has just opened a circulating picture collection, the first of its kind in this city. The collection includes pictures from the Shakespearean Supplements recently published by The New York Times and also pictures from The Times Mid-Week Pictorial, and

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 guage used by the p