Michalowska was introduced to the glass plate negative collection when volunteering at the library with special collections librarian Richard Ring. "There's a lot of mysteries involved," she tells me. Who took the photos, what they show, and how they ended up in the library's collection are — right now — unclear. (I suggest they post photos online and invite tips from the community.) So the images can feel unmoored in history — a particular frustration in photos like these that tend to be more interesting for what they show than how they show it.
Besides the Corliss photos, a couple shots stick with me. One is a pair of studio portraits of a weathered middle-aged woman. She appears severe, but in one shot betrays a hint of a smile. The negative is screwed up, but wrong in a right way, so that her head seems to emerge like a dream from a black mist. The other shows a large Victorian house that was (is?) around here somewhere. It stands alone, looming over an expanse of dirt road. At the street corner in the foreground, a pole supports wires — perhaps for a trolley line — a sign of the coming growth of the town, a sign of the future.
Read Greg's blog at gregcookland.com/journal.
Related:
Photos: From century-old glass plate negatives, Censorship for Me, Penelope, Library critics press for more oversight at the PPL, More 
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An exhibit of photos from century-old glass plate negatives at the Providence Public Library
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Lisa Jahn-Clough's young-adult novel Me, Penelope is the subject of a recent dispute at Tavares Middle School in Orlando, Florida.
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Calling the management of the Providence Public Library (PPL) arrogant and disinterested in providing library services, library critics continue to press for more public control of the nonprofit corporation.
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When a leaky roof closed the Washington Park branch of the Providence Public Library in January, a small number of children’s books were moved to a nearby former Benny’s store on Broad Street, and the branch’s literacy and after-school services fanned out to other locations.
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The battle to rescue the historic Providence Public Library system from financial collapse may be nearing potential resolution.
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In May 1978, Providence police raided the exhibition “Private Parts” at the Electron Movers loft on North Main Street to enforce a then-new state obscenity law.
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What, did you think we were done ripping the Neanderthal who set the country back five decades in just eight years, just because he’s out of office? Well, we want to be the first to mock all of those involved in building a library commemorating America’s first illiterate president. We’d also like to recommend the first book for inclusion in the project: The Pet Goat .
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Political innocents who discount allegations that Boston Mayor Thomas Menino is politicizing the Boston Public Library’s board of trustees so that he can directly control the nation’s oldest free municipal library received a rude awakening recently.
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Topics:
Museum And Gallery
, Media, Poetry, Libraries, More
, Media, Poetry, Libraries, Margaret Bourke-White, Providence Public Library, Providence Public Library, Providence Public Library, AS220, AS220, George Corliss, Less
