Library of Congress photojournalism curator discusses archives, coming innovative newsletter  

A wide range of insights about the connection between photojournalism and history were presented during a recent National Press Club Photography Team luncheon talk by Adam M. Silvia, curator of photography in the Library of Congress’ Prints & Photographs Division.

The Library of Congress has approximately 10 million archived photojournalism images as well as 34,000 newspaper titles and 60,000 periodicals.

Silvia discussed the workflow of archiving materials such as making acquisitions, processing and creating descriptions of photos — often with little or no information about images during his March 18 presentation, titled “Photojournalism: From News to History.” He noted that 83% of the photojournalism images preserved by the Library of Congress are part of 12 photographic archives from news agencies, newspapers, magazines, government and various organizations.

Today, he said, the library's challenges include significantly fewer newspapers and periodicals from which to obtain photojournalism images for the archives. More photojournalists are freelancers than in the past and have their own historic images. This is a shift away from centralized sources of news images that donated their photo morgues to the Library of Congress in the past. The Library of Congress is adapting to this change by now working with individual photojournalists to construct portfolios representing their important contributions to human interest reporting.

The Library of Congress has an online guide to Photojournalism Collections under its Research Guides section, Silvia said. Some of the information is grouped by human interest reporting, women photojournalists, iconic photojournalism images, and more. It can be accessed at https://guides.loc.gov/photojournalism or by searching “Library of Congress Photojournalism."

Silvia said he wants National Press Club members to know about a newsletter that will launch this spring called “Photojournalism Research.” It will have information about new photo acquisitions, programs, exhibits and photographer stories.

Club members who are interested in receiving the new photojournalism newsletter are encouraged to either email Silvia directly ([email protected]) or Club Photography Team Chair Alan Kotok ([email protected]), who will forward the requests.