>> From the Library of
Congress in Washington DC.
>> John Cole: Good evening,
and welcome to the
Library of Congress.
I'm John Cole, I'm the director
of the Center for the Book
in the Library of Congress, an
organization that promotes books
and reading but also helps
promote the collections
of the Library of Congress
through this particular series,
it's called Books and Beyond,
and each of our presentations
features authors
of recently published books
that have something to do
with the Library of Congress.
And boy do we have a
couple of books tonight
that have something to do
with the Library of Congress.
Our program is co-sponsored
by the Publishing Office
and at this point,
it's my pleasure
to introduce tonight's moderator
and organizer, W. Ralph Eubanks,
who is Director of Publishing
at the Library of Congress.
Let's give Ralph a hand.
[ Applause ]
>> W. Ralph Eubanks:
Thanks very much, John,
and a happy Flag Day
to everyone here.
I'm very pleased today, to be
introducing two books tonight;
one that's a brand new book, and
one that's a reissue of a book
that we did several years ago.
The first book is, Old
Glory: Unfurling History,
and the author is here with
us tonight, Karal Ann Marling.
And Old Glory is a book that
includes about 70 images
from the library's
collections, featuring,
that really tell the story
of the history of
the American flag.
And it's one of the
amazing things
about the library's
collections is that in going
through those collections,
how much you can find
that really ties in with the
history of the American flag
and tell you the, both
the origins and some
of the quirkier things
about the American flag.
And I think that's
one of the things
that Karal will talk
about tonight.
Karal Ann Marling is a
professor of art history
and American studies at the
University of Minnesota.
And she has published quite
extensively; I understand you're
on your 20th book now?
Twenty-third book now.
And some of her recent
books include;
George Washington Slept
Here, Illusions of Eden:
Visions of the American
Heartland,
and my personal favorite,
Graceland:
Going Home with Elvis.
Our reissue book is, Eyes of
the Nation, and the co-author
of the book is Vincent
Virga, along with the curator
of the Library of Congress,
curators of the Library
of Congress, and I'm
pleased to say that a number
of those curators are here
tonight to talk about some
of the items that
really tie in with,
that are other cultural icons;
so we have the flag and Eyes
of the Nation, which
is the visual history
of the United States, so tying
in all those various
cultural icons.
And Vincent is here
tonight to kind
of lead things off
with the curators.
Vincent's been called America's
foremost picture editor
and he has researched, edited,
and designed picture
sections for over 150 books.
And most recently he has
been the picture editor
for Living History, by
Hilary Rodham Clinton,
and the upcoming, My
Life, by Bill Clinton.
He is right now working
on a book exploring maps
as cultural documents,
called Cartographia:
Mapping Civilization.
So, I have to show the books
to you here, this is Old Glory,
which is a nice little
book here.
And, Eyes of the Nation,
which is a nice big book.
And without further audio,
I'd like to turn things
over to Karal Ann Marling,
who will start off
the program tonight.
So Karal Ann.
[ Applause ]
>> Karal Anyone Marling:
Thank you.
I have to do PowerPoint
tonight and this is,
I'm one of those Luddites, who
barely uses postage stamps,
so this may be a little tricky.
[ Ambient Noise ]
Wasn't that strange?
[ Ambient Noise ]
Ah, here we go.
[ Ambient Noise ]
So there's Old Glory.
I was telling stories
today at lunch, by the way,
about my various relationships
with American icons,
which is what I've been writing
about for the last 30 years
or so, and the one that came to
mind was a particular triumph
in Washington DC years ago,
when I had just published a book
on the Battle of Iwo Jima,
and its consequences.
A subject that has
begun to appear
in the news again these last
few weeks, in part I guess
because one of the
last remaining veterans
of the first flag raising
that lives in Minneapolis,
and we're in the process
of doing a movie about him.
But I remember showing up
at the National Press Club
for their annual
Christmas book signing
and it was traumatic
in many ways.
I was at a booth next to a lady
who had just written a new book
on her own theories about
the discovery of Anastasia,
who must also of course,
be an icon of some sort.
And she had that particular
Anastasia in her booth with her.
The only thing I can think
of comparable is staying
at the Pink Motel across
the street from Graceland
and discovering a lobby
full of ladies who had 3
and 4 year old children
with them, dressed as Elvis.
And pointing out that Elvis
had come to them in dreams
and impregnated them and these
were in fact, little Elvis's.
But in any event, there I am
signing books next to Anastasia
and in comes the commandant
of the Marine Corps,
stiff as a board.
With every medal you can
imagine glittering on his front,
about 10 feet taller than I, and
came directly over to my booth
and said, this book
is a disgrace,
I'd like to punch you right
in the nose, to which I had
to think up, very
quickly, a retort,
so I acted like an indignant
3rd grade teacher and sort
of slapped him around verbally.
And that was the end of that.
But this is only, what, 12 or
so years ago, and it was unheard
of for women to write
books about soldiers.
That was the principle offense.
That and that I had co-written
the book with a young man
with very long hair
who was not old enough
to have been a marine
at that point.
And so we were both assumed
to be some kind of, I believe,
commie hippie was the word
that was bandied about.
So I'm redeeming myself now by
writing a book about Old Glory.
In the years right after
the Second World War,
right up through the
Korean War and the Cold War,
my father always took us kids
to the Memorial Day Parade.
We drove to my grandma's house
and went the rest of the way
to the choicest spot along the
parade route in our trusty,
family wagon, depending
on age, of course,
the little ones could
sit and ride,
the older ones had
to walk behind.
Most of the time, that wagon was
a bit of a neighborhood eyesore,
draped with a disreputable
old tarp
when it was a covered
wagon going west,
smeared with watercolors
when it was a circus wagon
for circuses held in the garage.
But for Memorial Day, it
was always hosed down,
its side slats recovered from
the sand pile or the basement,
and everything decorated
with red,
white, and blue crepe paper.
The wheels were oiled, the
pillows were put in place,
and we were off to the parade.
Now there were a few
warnings along the way;
we were not to whine for any
of the fancy geegaws sold
at curbside, the little whips,
the little celluloid
kewpie dolls on sticks,
the majorette batons with silver
glitter glued to the knob,
but somehow, we always managed
to acquire little cloth flags,
stapled to wooden dowels with
a shiny gold finial on top.
And these we waved ceaselessly,
and on the way home,
used to poke at an
annoying brother or sister.
Now occasionally the flags
were confiscated at that point,
only to reemerge
the following year,
a real money saver
for my father.
But I digress, we went
to the parade fairly mad
with anticipation, and
there have never been
such parades since, I think.
Real tanks thundering along,
soldiers, sailors, marines,
with honest to goodness guns,
firemen, the police band,
the coast guard band, high
school bands, gold star mothers,
portly ladies in white uniforms
and caps, artillery pieces,
horses, and about a gazillion
American flags fluttering
and flying as the kids
from Madison High School played
the Star Spangled Banner,
loud and brave and only
a little bit off key.
Everybody, except
the tiniest kids,
stood at attention the whole
time, kind of marching in place,
hands over our hearts, bursting
with something we couldn't
really describe; pride, sadness,
a deep soul-stirring love for
that place and those people
and that bright,
beautiful, morning.
To this day, I am apt to make
micro scenes at the ball park
or the hockey rink,
when somebody warbles
the National Anthem,
and an honor guard
marches in with Old Glory.
I'm apt to sniffle,
a tear will well up
and I always sing along,
badly, but fervently.
After all these years as a fan,
I can still get a little weepy
when I hear, Take Me
Out to the Ball Game,
during the 7th inning
stretch too.
Somehow for me, one
song evokes the other.
Peace, Cracker Jacks, the
rural calm of the outfield,
synthetic though it
may be these days,
and everything I love
about this country.
So it was a great joy to
write this book on the flag
and a little about its
fascinating history.
One of the first
things you'll notice,
this by the way is a baseball
stadium as you can see,
bringing out the flag.
One of the first things
you'll notice about Old Glory:
Unfurling History, is that
unlike most history books,
this one is full of little
kids, busting their buttons
with excitement about
holding a flag.
There are boys and
girls who dress
up like little flags,
here's one of them.
They unfurl their
banner sometimes
in a photographer's studio where
they pose as little admirals,
they wait for the parade to
start, they form living flags
as they march along
under parasols
of red and white and blue.
They stand for the eternal
youth and freshness of America.
The hope and excitement in the
eyes of boy and girl scouts
who get to march in the Memorial
Day Parade or wave a little flag
from a wagon on the curb.
There are old folks here
too, most notably, Uncle Sam,
the skinny old coot who's
tailed suit is made from a flag.
There are all kinds of legends
about the origins of Sam,
that he was an upstate
meat packer from New York,
named Samuel Wilson, who stamped
barrels of beef for the army
with the letters US,
during the war of 1812.
Or, that he was a character
and a political cartoon
lampooning Andrew Jackson,
et cetera, et cetera.
During World War I he pointed
sternly out of thousands
of posters, telling young men
that he wanted them for the army
and he wanted them right now.
But he also stands, I think,
for wisdom and tradition,
and a certain eccentric
individualism
which this young country
has always found room for.
So old people, children.
And then, of course,
there are the ladies,
God bless them' Betsy
Ross, who may
or may not have been the
Arch Street seamstress
from Philadelphia who
first sewed the ruffles
on George Washington's
shirts and later,
as the Revolutionary War
drew closer, and closer,
to her little shop, the first
version of the American flag.
The evidence suggests that one
of her distant relations spruced
up an old family story about
a Revolutionary era ancestress
to open a booming new
tourist attraction,
the Flag House it was called
during the 1876 American
Centennial Exposition
in Philadelphia.
But true or false, it's one
of those stories that ought
to be true insofar as it
recognizes the contributions
of American women to the
birth of the republic.
If George Washington is
the father of this country,
then Betsy is surely the mother
of our great national family,
a symbol for every woman who
sewed and cooked and fretted,
and eventually helped win the
war of the greatest generation,
wearing the overalls
of Rosie the Riveter.
If she could be, as she sewed,
a bit of a tart sometimes
as in this charming 1901 pinup,
well, she was always a patriot.
Now the flag, with
two ladies here
in a very mysterious photograph,
the flag flutters
behind presidents.
It flies in times of mourning as
it does now, all over Washington
in sad tribute to the
late President Reagan.
It signifies triumph as well,
this is the RFK funeral train
coming into Washington DC.
It can also symbolize
triumph as when it flew
on the airless surface of
the moon on July 20, 1969,
with a little help from NASA
and a couple of wires sewed
into the hem just as Betsy
Ross might have recommended.
It has never meant
more though, Old Glory,
than when it demonstrated
our resilience and confidence
and shock and grief, in
the aftermath of 9/11.
The flag is America, its
soldiers and presidents,
its starry-eyed children,
its heroic women,
it's those who have grown
old under the banner
of freedom and good will.
The Library of Congress
I discovered, is a rich
and endless repository of
flag images that remind us
of who we are, and who
we were, all of us,
in the land of the free
and the home of the brave.
I'd like to thank the library
very much for the opportunity
to work on this book, as well
as Bunker Hill Publishing.
I also want to thank someone
who's not here tonight,
but should be, that's
Amy Paston [phonetic],
who did the picture research and
is either in Rome, eating pasta,
or shaking hands with the pope,
we're not quite sure which.
Thank you very much.
If you have questions,
should we hold them until--
>> [inaudible]
>> We'll have them at the end.
Thank you.
[ Applause ]
>> Vincent Virga: Now
it's my turn with this.
[ Ambient Noise ]
>> You could try it again.
>> No, no, I'm going to
[inaudible] everybody
with the struggle, if I put
on my glasses, it will happen.
[ Ambient Noise ]
Here we go.
[ Ambient Noise ]
First I want to say,
I'm profoundly grateful
to have [inaudible]
from Bucket Hill Press,
because they brought the book
back to life and the cover
of the book, now has
an American icon on it,
the arm of the Statue
of Liberty.
And this picture is so famous,
because what happened
was essentially,
the French gave the statue
to the United States,
but they didn't give
any place to put it,
and there was no money,
they had no place to put it
and no money to find a place.
So they sent it around, and
for 25 cents, you could go
up the arm and stand at the
top, it was a Madison Square
in New York City, and that's
how they raised the money
for Bedloe's Island.
So to have this on the
cover, is a wonderful thing.
The first time I came to
the Library of Congress,
was about 27 years ago.
I came because I was doing a
book, it was my first assignment
as a picture editor and the
assignment was to take 12 songs
that had been called
America: Why I Love Her,
and had been recorded
by John Wayne.
So my first job as a picture
editor was working for one
of the great American
icons, John Wayne.
I came here and I discovered,
I discovered the
Library of Congress.
I didn't know what this
place was, all I knew was
that at home, I had lots
of books about the WPA
and the photographs,
and I thought,
I needed neutral photographs
because I didn't know
at that point, that there
were things called budgets
and essentially I needed to
get free photographs so I came
to the Library of Congress.
And I discovered this enormous
cache of treasures and so
for me, over the decades
as I did picture work
on all the books I've done as
a picture editor, I would come
to the library and no
matter what the subject was,
I would come to the library
and I did a biography
of Walt Whitman I remember, and
the first time I went in to look
at material in the
manuscripts division,
they rolled out the cart and
they said, here's Walt Whitman.
So for me, this place really
became this spiritual center
of the nation, because
Walt Whitman lives here,
and all of the people I
love live here in some form,
in some manifestation,
30 million books.
It is still for me, the
Everest of libraries.
And when I came here to do Eyes
of the Nation, I came wanting
to do a book with the
library and I suggested
that we do a visual, a visual
compendium and we decided
that the only thing
that was possible,
in order to encompass
the enter collection,
was to do a visual history
of the United States
and so we got together,
And what happened was,
I gathered with all
of the curators in a room, and
I had said already that the,
I wanted a book that was not
going to be like anything else.
I wanted a book where
we have material
that nobody had ever seen.
So, we gathered in the room
that first day, and I said,
I'm not going to tell you what
I want, I'm going to ask you
to bring to the table,
what you love.
I'm going to ask
you, as curators,
to show me what are the images
that get you here
in the morning?
What are the images that
make you treasure the time
that you spend here
in the collection.
So what we did was we
would pick an image,
someone would bring an
image, and then we would talk
about that image and we
would constellate that image,
in other words, we would say
what does this make you think of
and what we've done tonight
is several of the curators
who worked on the
project, are here tonight.
Not everyone, but there are
several, and I've asked if we,
if they would pick an
image and then let's talk
about it for a few minutes.
So I'm going to click
through and just put the image
on the screen and then ask the
curator who was responsible
for that image with me,
to just stand for a minute
and talk a bit about what that
image is and why we chose it,
because there are, I
mean what is, like four
and a half million
photographs alone, I think,
in is it the [inaudible]
collection?
Four and a half million?
So what we have is an, it's a
breathtaking experience to come
into this place and say, okay,
we're going to make a book.
Originally we were supposed to
have 280 images in this book,
and we wound up with 500
because I kept putting things
on the table and saying
to [inaudible], no, no,
we can't lose this, we have
to have this, it's a treasure.
And it's very rare.
And I've finally come
to the conclusion
that the greatest treasure in
the Library of Congress is,
in fact, the people you're going
to meet tonight, the curators.
Because their passion for
the stuff, as we call it,
and their understanding of the
context of all of the material,
is what made this book
the greatest experience
of my professional life,
putting this together.
So I would like to introduce
you to them via the work,
which is how I met them.
[ Ambient Noise ]
My glasses, so you'll
see nothing.
[ Ambient Noise ]
No, that wasn't supposed
to happen.
>> [inaudible]
>> Click it, oh, here we go.
Okay, this would
be Pat [inaudible],
from the motion picture
division.
Pat.
[ Ambient Noise ]
>> Patrick Loughney:
Thank you, Vincent.
I'm something of an interloper
here because I'm a curator
of moving images and as you well
know, this is a book that talks
about and shows still images.
So I want to thank Vincent
for the opportunity to join
in this project originally,
and the kind tolerance
of my colleagues in the Prints
and Photographs Division
for allowing me to come
in and be a part of this.
But it is appropriate
for a number of reasons,
institutionally, the
present Moving Image Section,
Motion Picture, Broadcasting
and Recorded Sound Division
was actually a part or section
of the Prints and Photographs
Division until 1978,
so the parentage of my
particular part of the library,
has its long origins in the
Prints and Photographs Division.
But also, the images that
you're looking at come
at the very historic
intersection between the advent
of moving images and their
birth from still photography.
Moving images came
as an inventive
and technological thrust out of
the success of moving images,
excuse me, out of the success of
still images that were invented
and perfected after
the Civil War,
not only in America,
but in Europe.
And there was actually
a race going
on in many European
countries, as well as America,
to find the technology
and invent the technology
that created moving images.
And it was Edison who actually
perfected the two technologies
necessary to bring these images
that you are about to see
or that you see shown on
this particular screen.
That is the camera to record
the images, and the technology
to play back the
images in parallel.
Because the camera
recorded the image
and Edison named
it the Kinetograph,
that is to write with light.
And the Kinetoscope was the
invention required to play back
or to read or see the images.
And what is appropriate about
this image is that the man
who actually did the inventive
work is in this particular film,
he's the man playing the
violin, his name is WKL Dickson,
or William Kennedy-Laurie
Dickson as he was known.
His mother was American, his
father was English and he,
as a very young inventor, wrote
to Edison and asked for a job.
And he was hired originally as
a still photographer and then,
because of his great
talent and genus,
began to get very
intimately involved in many
of the inventions
perfected by Edison.
But the remarkable thing about
this series of four frames
that you see, is that it
is from a roll of film
that is actually 49 feet
long, that is preserved
in the Motion Picture Division
of the Library of Congress,
and it is a film that was
never seen by the public.
It is actually a, an experiment,
because from the start,
from the original idea to create
moving images, Edison's idea was
to actually create synchronized
sound moving images.
And he worked very hard
because to do this,
but it was never
commercially successful.
But they actually produced this
film in the Edison laboratory
at the Edison historic site,
present day Edison historic site
in West Orange, New Jersey,
and it was a laboratory
experiment produced
by WKL Dickson and his
colleagues, to show Edison
on return from a
journey to Europe,
the exact date it was
produced is lost to us,
and scholarship is not yet
revealed, but we think it is
in very early 1895, and
Edison, as you all know,
perfected the cylinder, the
sound recording cylinder,
and the large acoustical
horn that you see projecting
into the image shows us that
this film was actually made
in the sound recording
laboratory
at the Edison historic site
and it is a little known fact
that the whole motion
picture production unit
at the Edison Company,
was underneath the
administrative structure
of the sound recording
department
for the first 10 years of
its existence until 1903.
So, images were subordinate
to sound
and this particular experimental
film was never seen publicly
until it was shown in
reconstructed format
in 1998 here at the
Library of Congress.
I'm happy to say, that the
inclusion of this image
in this book helped spark
a preservation effort.
The sound recording
is a wax cylinder,
broken into many pieces which is
at the Edison Historic
site, a brown wax cylinder.
We were able to fund the
rerecording of these,
of this cylinder, which was
reconstructed very carefully.
And using a series of
grants that we obtained,
it is now being exhibited
on a disc, a DVD produced
by the National Film
Preservation Foundation,
which will be released
in September this year,
in which the soundtrack
synchronized with the image,
will be heard on a DVD format.
So it is a very interesting and
long-term preservation project
which this book, and which
Vincent, actually helped get
under way and someday I
hope that you all hear it.
So thank you for the opportunity
and I hope you find this
fascinating, as much as I do,
because I think it's a really
important technological missing
link that shows the origins of
moving images in the whole age
of still photography
as it was developed
in the late 19th century.
Thank you.
[ Applause ]
>> Vincent Virga: The library's
called America's memory
basically, and when I
came, we had the title,
Eyes of the Nation, and I
couldn't imagine a book,
Eyes of the Nation,
without the movies,
because the movies are
the eyes of the nation,
I mean basically they recorded
us as a people and then
when I started working
with Pat, Pat explained
to me how the movies brought
us together as a nation.
That people would go
to the silent films
and they would see America,
they would be sitting
in their little places
and suddenly they
would see the cities
and they would see what
their country was like,
so the movies are one of the
things that brought us together
as a people and helped
us define ourselves.
[ Ambient Noise ]
Supposed to just click on this.
>> [inaudible]
>> The other button?
[ Ambient Noise ]
There we go.
Ford? Ford Peatross.
[ Ambient Noise ]
>> Ford Peatross:
Thank you, Vincent.
>> You're welcome.
>> Hello everyone.
So, this image, okay, well
Vincent asked us to speak
and choose something and
I came up with this one,
actually fairly easily, I
narrowed it down to about 3
or 4 out of, I think
I lobbied for what,
lobbied for hundreds of images.
But I think we got,
I got in about 40,
in which we wrote
the captions for.
And this is Times Square
from above, February 16,
1932, by Samuel Gottscho.
It's an image from his
unpublished autobiography
which we also have, called
My Life in Photography,
which was written in 1940,
so he supervised this print.
But it's the print and the
negative set here in the Library
of Congress, until we did
this book and until we put
over 30 thousand of his images
on our website and now they're
in every classroom in America.
And because we did
such a good job,
the family gave us the rights
to everything as they promised,
so it's now all in
the public domain
and anyone can do
anything with them.
Isn't that grand?
But so why this one?
Well, because it never
fails to stir my soul.
Because I still love to hear
people gasp when they see it
for the first time,
so beautifully
and faithfully printed on the
pages of The Eyes of the Nation.
Because it represents
the part of my job
that gives me great joy;
functioning as a sort
of talent scout, stage mother,
and occasionally an
impresario for images.
Because it represents the talent
and point to the work of one
of those thousands and thousands
of creators whose works
and achievements have been
insufficiently celebrated
or disseminated, or enjoyed, or
appreciated and deserved to be.
Samuel Gottscho was
a kindly, courtly,
affable man who acquired
his first camera in 1896.
From 1896 to 1920, he began
photography part-time,
specializing in houses
and gardens.
A devotee of Thoreau, he
particularly enjoyed nature,
country scenes, and
landscapes, imagine.
He attended exhibitions of
architectural photographs,
worked to perfect and
improve his own work,
and in the mid 1920's, at
the age of 50, after 23 years
as a traveling lace salesman,
he became a full-time
professional photographer
at the young age of 50.
Seven years later, on a frigid
sparkling February evening,
he left his warm fireside,
his wife, his little daughter,
Doris, and hauled his large
format camera equipment
from Jamaica, Queens, to this
eerie high above Times Square,
to freeze his tuchus off?
No. To patiently and masterfully
compose and create an image
that defines a time and
a place for eternity.
The great white day, great white
way, a river of razzle dazzle,
snakes its way through
a canyon of skyscrapers.
The world is tilted
forward like an [inaudible],
cropped like an Hiroshige,
with the shimmering lights
and inky blacks of
a Whistler nocturne,
the sparkling syncopations of
Joplin, and the dark, bright,
jagged, harmonies of Gershwin.
Go Sam! Eight years ago, Vincent
asked his fellow constellators?
Oculus, to write short, personal
overviews to go with the end
of Eyes of the Nation.
I concluded then and I
still agree, quote myself,
the acquisition, conservation,
service and interpretation
of the original documents
in the library's collections is
a special privilege and a unique
and ever expanding education.
Frequently, one is allowed a
glimpse of the spark of genius
that bridges the synapse between
human thought and activity
at their highest level.
Ultimately to collect for
the Library of Congress is
to share all of this
with future generations.
It just doesn't get
any better than that.
[ Laughter - Applause ]
>> Vincent Virga:
You see what I mean?
It just doesn't get any
better than this place,
working with people like this.
The next image--
[ Ambient Noise ]
Left [inaudible]
yes, Verna Curtis.
This actually opens the
book, it's one of the images
in the front of the book.
Two of the images in
the front of the book.
[ Ambient Noise ]
>> Verna Curtis: Thanks.
I too, when asked about
something to talk about tonight
as an icon, did it with
no hesitation and thought
about this American Elm tree
by a contemporary
photographer, Tom Zetterstrom.
Your image on the screen
is a little bit squashed
and unfortunately does not
show exactly the stateliness
and the height of this singular
standout which we all know,
it's the botanical name being
almost Americana, American Elm,
a certain species that
I learned a good bit
about in preparing
these remarks.
Originally, Vincent
asked for some images,
sort of at the end I think,
just about as the book was going
to the publisher, that
would be at the front,
that would signify America
and I had been dealing
with this photographer who
is the son of an arborist,
and lives in Connecticut,
and had been putting
together a portfolio
that he calls, Portrait
of Trees.
And he had come in with trees
from all over the United States,
usually singular ones, but when
he came with this, American Elm,
I said we have to have it.
And I was soon to find out
that buying this from him,
we did it through a donor
actually, inspired him to go
and photograph the tree
under all, in all seasons.
So what you see here is a
parallel and a synchronicity
between the summer
and the winter,
and the library also owns his
photographs of fall and spring
of this same tree in
the same location.
The species is ubiquitous,
it's all over the United States
and in Southern Canada,
and hence its democratic,
a first [inaudible] requisite
for being an icon,
an American icon.
And it's a state tree
of Massachusetts,
North Dakota, and Nebraska.
It's the staple of New
England and is as important
to our heritage as
an architectural icon
such as the white steeples
and like the tradition
of Thanksgiving.
It has a history, the tree
does, that is the content
of this photograph, of
being an embarkation point
for George Washington, a
resting place for Lafayette,
there's a famous tree that was
in Massachusetts called the
Liberty Tree, and it's fabled
to have been the ground under
which Buffalo Bill played
and the destination
for Daniel Boone,
so it is as American
as apple pie.
And by the 1920's, people in
the country recognized its grace
and the arching canopy it
provided when planted together
and it began to line streets
and towns all over the country.
There are more Elm Streets
than Main Streets in America.
It delivered then, the ideal
of the countryside in town
and it typified as no other
tree, the finest living things
in American life, 25
million trees existed
in American towns
and cities in 1937.
I was keen to find
out that last year,
a book was published called,
The Republic of Shade,
it's quite a nice read,
by Thomas Campanella
of Yale University, 2003,
the first book dedicated
to the Elm tree.
So, did it fit into icon?
Yes. But why didn't we choose
an Elm lined street in America?
Well, the reason that
Tom Zetterstrom's Elm,
which is in a field on Baldwin
Hill in Massachusetts, Egremont,
Massachusetts which is on
the border of Connecticut,
is that the image, not only
the content, but the form
of the photograph is
what I feel is iconic.
Tom knows how important the tree
and the vegetable
kingdom have been to man,
how poets have immortalized
it, how it in itself,
going through four seasons
of the year, standing tall
and straight, having the shape
of a fountain, feels like us.
We identify with trees.
And he also as a person
interested in the tree
from his parentage
and from growing up,
understood that this Yankee
pastoral symbol was endangered,
and I find it rather interesting
that we put it in the book,
he was very proud of it, and
later it did, as an icon does,
it not only achieved the status
and sustained the status of icon
and began to inspire the
photographer himself.
And I bring you a pamphlet
that he circulates,
he has been the founder of
something called, Elm Watch,
which is a citizens
group, a private as well
as public citizen's group,
dedicated to the protection
of historic and scenic American
Elms and he put his own tree,
the one that we iconized for him
in a way in Eyes of the Nation,
on the pamphlet cover and it
is a symbol that he's trying
to keep alive, they do all sorts
of things like inject the trees
in order to prevent sort
of antibiotic prevention
of the Elm disease which
has devastated that symbol
of ours across the land.
But it is coming back,
there are several strains
that have been achieved
or bred that are resistant
to the disease so I think
that we will have it live on,
not only in Eyes of the Nation,
but on the streets of America.
[ Applause ]
>> Vincent Virga: This I think
is one of the most famous images
in the book and Beverly Brannon
is going to talk about it,
and also one of the
reasons why we chose it.
And also, there are
others from this
that she can talk about too.
[inaudible]
[ Ambient Noise ]
>> Beverly Brannon: Other
people have said that they get
to do the best work at the
library, but I think I get it,
because I get to work
with the Farm Security
Administration collection.
This photograph, you
probably all know,
was made for Dorothea
Lange, it's commonly known
as Migrant Mother, it's the
most famous of five images
that were made of this 32
year old, Florence Thompson,
and her children, in a migrant
camp in Nipomo, California,
near Modesto, in March 1936.
It's a silver gelatin
photograph,
was part of the Farm Security
Administration collection,
not the WPA, that's at
the National Archives.
So, it was one of
the first images made
for the historical section,
which was the little
bitty working group
within the historical section,
within the much larger
Department of Agriculture.
It's one of the most
widely reproduced
and familiar photographs
in history.
Lange made this series in the
first year of that section,
and it came to symbolize
the rest of the collection,
which was to document the
lives of those displaced
by agricultural disasters.
It immediately captured
the imagination
of the depression generation.
Lange went home from this shoot,
developed it, delivered it
to a newspaper and UPI
immediately published it all
over the country, with
the news that people
in these migrant labor camps
were dying of starvation,
and within a few days
thousands and thousands
of dollars had been donated
to the migrant labor camps,
but Florence Thompson's
family had already moved
on so they didn't benefit
from the generosity
in the American people.
We learned, doing research
for the Eyes of the Nation,
that Florence Thompson was
a full-blooded Cherokee
from Oklahoma.
She arrived in California
some 15 years later,
back when it was still thought
to be the Land of Promise.
Her ancestors had been relocated
from Tennessee in the Trail
of Tears, in the 1840's,
so she had a long history
in the United States and we
were pleased to learn that,
doing research for
this publication,
but since that time,
we've learned even more
about Florence Thompson.
Her grandson, Roger Sprague,
spoke to us, very movingly,
about Florence Thompson's
vision for her, sorry,
her version of her life.
Previously we'd only
had Dorothea Lange's,
which I pretty much
summarized for you, but it turns
out that Florence Thompson
was waiting beside of the road
for her husband or her
common law husband,
to arrive with a repaired
radiator for the car.
Thompson had moved out
to California initially
with her husband, the first
day they were there they picked
peaches, he got covered with
peach fuzz, they all got covered
with peach fuzz, there were
no bathing facilities there.
So they got in the creek
to get the peach fuzz off,
he contracted typhoid and
was dead within 36 hours.
So, after that, she was left
with these very young children,
infants some of them, to
raise, and she did that,
she picked up a man along the
way who didn't like to work,
but did like to stay
home with the children
and get them to school.
And she raised them
through her own labor.
When she left the fields, around
the beginning of World War II,
she went to work as a waitress
and then later became
a hospital attendant.
She never had much
education, but she was able
to keep her family
going without welfare.
Her children bought her a
nice house in the 1970's
but they were unable to maintain
the payments on it, so she ended
up moving back to the same camp
where her photograph was made,
nearly the same site, close
to the road, and lived there
in a trailer until
she died in 1983.
And we're very pleased to
know this much more about her.
Her grandson is working to
publish the family's version
of what happened, but it's that
kind of story that brings me
to work every morning.
And this is just one of
about 165 thousands pictures
in that one collection.
Thank you.
[ Applause ]
>> Vincent Virga: We had
actually discussed whether
or not we would use this picture
because it was so famous,
and we said, do we really want
to repeat something this famous,
but then Beverly brought all
the other images that she,
that Dorothea Lange
shot when she shot this,
so that when you look in
the book, you'll see all
of the other ones, as
well as this famous one.
Sarah Duke.
[ Ambient Noise ]
>> Sarah Duke: When
Vincent asked me to speak,
I selected an image
that was the confluence
of two American ideals; that
of artistic representation
and architectural achievement,
even though I'm not the,
our curator of architecture.
Currier and Ives dominated
the American market
in the 19th century, and they
didn't produce artistically,
not, they produced
artistically great images,
but they didn't reproduce
paintings.
They created their own images.
And what you have here, is
the Great East River Bridge,
or the Brooklyn Bridge,
before it was ever built.
This was a subscription
image from 1874,
after the towers were
starting to be built,
actually I think the
towers were completed
and the wires were starting
to be strung across the river,
the bridge went public,
by subscription
and actually paid back investors
more than they put into it.
So, Currier and Ives was working
as a job, to create an image
to sell to investors, to
purchase a piece of the bridge.
Nathaniel Currier began his
career in New York, in 1834,
having served several years of
apprenticeship as a lithographer
and he maintained the
tradition of his early career
in producing hand-pulled
lithographs,
not the chromolithographs
of, they were,
that had become popular by
1874, but hand-pulled images,
hand-colored, exquisitely
detailed.
He and his coworker, James Ives,
particularly marketed their
images as cheap popular prints,
they wanted them to hang on the
walls of churches, of schools,
of parlors, of taverns,
they wanted the American
public to know about them.
And when the firm
went bankrupt in 1907,
no longer a popular icon,
many people neglected them.
But historians have come to
regard the talents and hard work
and artistic endeavor of
Currier and Ives, and suddenly,
people have searched
their attics,
their grandmother's homes,
and have brought them forth.
The Library of Congress is
very pleased to have this work
and others by copyright deposit.
We also have some by
gift and exchange.
The Brooklyn Bridge was the
first suspension built bridge,
built with steel wire, an
innovation that John Roebling,
the architect and engineer who
died before he ever saw it raise
up from the ground,
brought to the span his son,
Washington Roebling, saw
it completed in 1883,
and so it's the first steel,
it was the largest
suspension bridge of its time,
the first one to use steel wire,
and it was conceived as a means
to relieve the overcrowding
of Manhattan
and bring it traffic
back to Brooklyn
and to developed Brooklyn,
which was mainly rural,
and it was so successful that
before he ever saw it completed,
Roebling had conceived of
three additional bridges
to relieve the congestion
of the traffic
between Manhattan and Brooklyn.
And so in conclusion,
I just offer you,
anyone want to buy a bridge?
[ Laughter - Applause ]
>> Vincent Virga: At the first
meeting when I met Ron Grim,
the curator of maps, I
had said that I don't,
I said I don't get maps.
And Ron put his head
on the table and said,
that's the story of my life.
And I explained that
I don't get them
because they're always too small
in books and I can't read them,
and I wanted to do something
in Eyes of the Nation
that would bring the map
into, into its proper place,
because I've come to
love maps, thanks to Ron.
He helped me understand
that they're actually cultural
landscapes that when we look
at the map, we're looking
through a time glass
into the past.
And this is a particularly
interesting map that Ron's going
to talk about for a
couple of minutes.
[ Ambient Noise ]
>> Ron Grim: The
icon I want to talk
about this evening is the
shape of the United States,
or the United States
as a shape and an icon.
As you look at this map on
the screen, it's a shape
that you do not recognize
and you probably are
thinking why did I choose this
particular image?
Well, I picked it for
a number of reasons.
It, in many ways,
symbolizes or is an icon
of my thinking and my training.
One of the images we included
in the book, was this image
of the United States, which
is a relatively recent map
of the United States done by
computer, it's a digital image
and it shows the United
States in its physical relief.
And the, our caption says that
this map is the physical base,
or the stage, on which
the drama of the history
of the United States
has developed.
Now this particular map that
you see here, was produced
by cartography students at
Queens University in Canada,
it's what's called a cartogram.
A cartogram is a distortion
of geographic space
to represent the particular
phenomena that you're mapping,
in this case, the population
of the United States.
It's called an isodemographic
map of North America.
That's a mouthful.
But basically, the geographic
areas are drawn in proportion
to the population of
those geographic areas,
rather than to the square
mileage, and so in this map,
you see a distortion, the New
England area, the northeast,
New York and Pennsylvania,
and the Midwest,
are drawn much larger than
the rest of the states.
California is also large,
Florida's fairly large,
but look at the states in
the west, look at the areas
of Wyoming, Colorado, Utah,
they're barely seen on the map.
This map also shows Canada.
It's sort of the thin
band across the top.
Remember, this map
was done by Canadians.
This map is one of the
maps that I first learned
about when I came to
the Library of Congress.
One of my first assignments
was to work on an exhibit
which was called, The
American Congress on Surveying
and Mapping Award Winners.
Each year, that organization
has a competition on map design,
and some of the categories
are from students.
This was one of the award
winners and we had it
in the exhibit one of the
first years that I was here.
This image always stuck with
me because it's unusual,
it's an unusual shape
of the United States.
Another reason I selected this
image is that I've been trained
as an historical and
a cultural geographer,
and one of the concepts
that I learned very early
and that I keep preaching,
particularly to Vincent,
is the idea of cultural
landscape is that you start
with a physical base, you start
with the terrain, the trees,
the vegetation, you start
with the basic shape
of the United States.
People come into that
particular environment
and they change it based on
the culture and technology
of the particular time.
Anyone particular place shows
layers of cultural change,
you look at the Chesapeake
and you see some of the area
of the Chesapeake or the tide
water, and you see place names
that reflect the Native
Americans, Potomac,
Rappahannock, the [inaudible].
But then you see another
layer of culture implanted
in the area; you see the
names of the counties,
Prince George's County, King
and Queen County, Essex County,
these are names from
the colonial period
which show the next layer
of cultural settlement
in that particular area.
What this map does,
it's a distortion,
it distorts the shape
of the United States,
in essence that's what
happens to that physical base
of the United States;
various cultures have come
into that area, they have
taken that physical landscape
and they have changed it and
made it into something unique.
And in this sense, we
have a unique image
of the United States, just
representing the population.
And the question I
would leave with you,
just think what the
cultural landscape
of this country would be,
if it had been settled
from a different direction.
Let's say it had been
settled from the West Coast
and the first people that came
into the United States
had been from China.
So keep this shape in mind.
[ Applause ]
>> Vincent Virga: The
last thing I wanted,
the last thing I wanted to
tell you is as Ron explained,
the last image we have is that
geological map which is the,
we called it, The Stage,
and that's followed
by a portrait gallery, we have
all of these prints that we took
from the various
divisions, I mean from the P
and P different collections,
portraits of people,
portraits of America, the
people who populated that.
And the very last thing
in the book is the lyrics
from Make Our Garden Grow,
Richard Wilbur's
lyrics from Candide.
Because I wanted to end the book
with that sense of the garden,
the growth of the country, and
so the last thing you read,
the last lines of the book are;
we're neither pure nor wise nor
good, we'll do the best we know,
we'll build our house,
and chop our wood,
and make our garden grow,
and make our garden grow.
Thank you.
[ Applause ]
Does anybody have any questions?
Are there any questions?
[ Ambient Noise ]
There may not be any.
[ Ambient Noise ]
>> When you looked for the
flags in our collections,
did you do so remotely or
did you come and look--
>> This has been a presentation
of the Library of Congress.
Visit us at loc dot gov.