We are all about glasses in this month’s edition of the Library’s
Free to Use and Reuse sets of copyright-free pictures, prints, graphics,
maps and so on. You can use these any way you like — blow them up like
posters, pass them along to friends, make them your online avatar.
Teddy Roosevelt as photographed by Baker’s Art Gallery in 1918.
Let’s start with Mr. Bully himself, Theodore Roosevelt. The 26th president was by all accounts a remarkable fellow. The illustrated fable
he wrote and sent to his three-year-old son on July 11, 1890 — while he
was working in Washington but the family was summering in Oyster Bay,
New York — is in the Library’s Manuscript Division. It’s a delight. His
refusal to shoot a shackled bear while hunting in Mississippi in 1902
soon became the inspiration for stuffed animals known as “teddy bears.”
And of course, everyone remembers him for the iconic pince nez
glasses he always wore. It’s that squint behind them, the piercing look
that he gave the camera when photographed, that helped capture his
boundless energy. And those glasses — or, rather, their case, in his
jacket pocket — helped slow an assassin’s bullet in 1912. Roosevelt,
with the bullet lodged against one of his ribs (where it would remain
for the rest of his life) gave the speech anyway, bleeding through his
shirt all the while.
Bully, Teddy!
Soldier peering out from a tank, Fort Knox, Kentucky, during World War II.
Next, you’d be forgiven for thinking this goggle-wearing Captain
America-type hero is straight from the latest comic turned movie
franchise. Check the lighting — that glow from under the chin! The
darkened eyes! That headgear in shadow! And that composition, the
vulnerable man trapped inside a death-dealing contraption of steel!
If it were from a movie, it might be worthy of an Oscar…but it’s a photograph of an unnamed American soldier
in June, 1942, during World War II, in a tank at Fort Knox, Kentucky.
Photographer Alfred T. Palmer did a masterful job of making him appear
both frightening and vulnerable.
And, lastly, this doozy, also from World War II.
World War II sunglasses for troops made from used photo negatives.
What the heck, you say? The Union of South Africa, as it was then
known, had come up with a way to make inexpensive “eye shields” for
soldiers battling in desert conditions. They took used photograph
negatives and washed off the emulsion. Then the negatives were cut and
placed in a frame. Bingo! Cheap sunglasses, way before ZZ Top had the
idea. More than a million were made for United Nation’s
troops. (Margaret Bucci of Washington, D.C., demonstrates them in this
publicity still.)
Here’s the cool thing: The original photograph imprinted on the
negative can be seen when you turn them upside down. Here, we did it for
you:
The
glasses, turned upside down, reveal the original image on
the negative:
a group of men, perhaps military officers, facing the camera.
See those two rows of men, caps on, looking at you, kid?
via https://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2019/12/free-to-use-and-reuse-glasses/
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