SightPhoto Blog

Check it out ... so to speak. The New York Public Library has launched a new digital image archive, which is accessible online. The NYPL Digital Gallery contains more than 275,000 scans from the library's archive, a good chunk of which are photographs. There's some pretty great stuff in here: the "Changing New York" photo collection shot for the WPA by Bernice Abbott; an album of pre-1890s Japan; more than 600 images by Lewis Hines depicting child and immigrant laborers; thousands of photos of stage and early screen actors, etc., etc. And what's up with photographer Dylan Stone's "26,000 color snapshot photographs taken in 1999, recording the streetscape, block by block, of Manhattan south of Canal Street" a collection which has the artistic merit of the drive-by photographers doing Amazon's A9 project. But that is in part what I love about rummaging through collections like the Digital Gallery -- it's like a big online flea market and you never know when you'll find a jewel.