>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. >> I'm Barbara Natanson. I head up Public Services in the Prints and Photographs Division. In the Prints and Photographs Division, we have about 15 million items in the collection. The largest portion of those are photographs, but today I brought some examples from our non-photographic collections. These are some lithographic prints from 1848 by James Bailey. I noticed one of these prints one day when I was putting collections away and what caught my eye was that this is a print that shows the stages of life of a woman from the cradle to the grave and I looked at this and it said that the woman was becoming a bride at age 30, and she was becoming a mother at age 40, and I thought, "hmm, I wonder it that's very typical of 19th Century women?" So, the thing I like about this print, besides looking at the details of it, it's just fun to look at, is that it sent me on a mission to carry out a lot of the actions that are involved in analyzing a picture. The stages of analyzing a picture, I summarize as a series of C's which starts with close looking. This print, as you can see, has a lot of detail. One could spend almost all day doing close looking at all the different elements of the picture. And inevitably, when I do close looking, just as you saw with my example, I start having questions like, "is this really typical?" So, the next part of the C's is curiosity. One of the things that really spurs curiosity, I found is conversation. So, when I started showing this print to some of my colleagues, they noticed details I hadn't noticed. They came up with questions I hadn't thought of. So, it's really a rich way to explore the picture. Another thing that I often do to sort of spur my own close looking is to look at something related to the material and compare. And fortunately with this print, I looked deeper in the box and found out that there was a companion print of a life of a man from cradle to the grave, which made for great comparison. I've shown these prints at teacher open houses sometimes and we've had a great time comparing for instance, how is a man depicted as an infant versus how is a woman depicted as an infant? Or how is a 100 year old woman versus a 100 year old man? Or better yet, the 50 year old woman who looks a lot more decrepit than the 50 year old man. One of my colleagues has thrown in another C to my analyzing pictures tips and that is caution or as she said, cold water, because sometimes when you look at a picture, you start to assume some things, or you maybe think that it is entirely factual. And all pictures, including photographs, may not necessarily be entirely factual and you may be making assumptions that are not valid. So, the next steps are to explore further and delve deeper. So, one of the things that can help you understand why a picture looks the way it does, is understanding some of the conventions and with pictures that may mean that there is some sort of almost like grammar and vocabulary. What are the symbols used in the picture? This picture has a lot of symbols in it. What are some of the compositional elements and where do those come from? Well, as I started to explore, I started to realize that this sort of stair step pyramid approach to showing the stages of something, was a very traditional format. It was a very traditional composition. In fact, I found another one that was a satirical print from just a little bit later called, "The Seven Stages of the Office Seeker." It was all about how a politician pursues his goals. In addition to that, I actually found an early medieval example, so it goes way back in art history. So that can help you understand, why does it look the way it does and why is it showing what it does? Beyond that, there's always the all important context. Who made it? For what purpose? Who was the intended audience? What was the technology that they needed to make this picture? And all of those things can help you understand why does it look the way it does and why is it conveying the message that it does? And is that a typical message for the time or is it a debate topic for the time? So, starting with one single picture, you can have a lot of fun just looking at the single picture itself, but you can also start on a journey of discovery. Researchers are certainly welcome to visit us online. We have an online catalog and we've digitized about one in a quarter million of our 15 million items. But, they are also welcome to come in - anybody who can get a valid reader identification card is welcome to come visit our reading room and look at the original pictures. Some of them are out in the room and some of them, they request using a call slip. Sometimes we need a little bit of advanced notice because sometimes materials are off site. >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us as loc.gov.