Apples
Missie King Oakley stirs apple butter at Twin Creeks, at the Tennessee and North Carolina border, circa 1933. / NPS Growing up, I was always confused by the...
S'mores II
No traditional caption here. The whole newsletter explains this image. / Boston Public Library Special Collections A year ago, I was close to posting here...
Birthdays
A stretch of Rock Creek Park in 2020, when so many city residents rediscovered this wild space amid the pandemic. / Dustin Renwick More often than not, I’m...
Houses
The monarch life stages, illustrated in a 1918 field guide. / Internet Archive A decade ago this summer, I was in the midst of an extended, exploratory...
BONUS | Process II
In-person research is always valuable and recommended for context. (I didn’t expect to find these menus in the Girl Scouts archives.) But much of my project...
Margaritas
A vintage postcard depicts Tijuana, Mexico, circa 1929. Spy the red awning of Turf Bar. / Dustin Renwick At a wedding a few years ago, I noticed a historical...
Photographs
“The baseball diamond as an important part of our general landscape” was one prompt for government photographers making images to reflect America in the...
Colors II
Lynda Benglis pours latex as she creates a floor sculpture in 1969. / LIFE magazine If you ask me about colors, three fragments from a decade ago pop into my...
Droplets
An 1851 illustration of the universe inside a drop of water, found in a book written by Agnes Catlow. / Public Domain Image Archive The ceaseless drip of...
S'mores
Girl Scouts gather around a campfire in 1925. / Courtesy of the Girl Scout Museum at Cedar Hill, Waltham, MA I’m SO EXCITED to reveal my latest National...
Dives II
I really, really, REALLY wanted this photo as my hero image, but it’s not in the public domain, and I didn’t receive the appropriate permissions in time...
Receipts
U.S. Navy chefs learn new recipes, circa 1915. / LOC I saw a new word last year that has stuck in my mind ever since, along with my competing emotions of...
Hopes
Winteravond (“Winter Evening”) says everything about the beauty of this season. / Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam As the year turns, the importance of archives can...
Coverings
Wallpaper on the first floor of Emily Dickinson’s house in Amherst, Massachusetts. / Dustin Renwick November was a month full of thinking about big narrative...
Biologies
The deathwatch beetle has inspired superstitions and a full Radiolab podcast episode. / Gilles San Martin If you plot the completion of my letters on the...
Celebrations
A cake sits ready for some special occasion in the 1920s (unknown photographer). / National Gallery of Art You made it through [today / this month / ten...
Basics
Ten painters fill in spaces among the Brooklyn Bridge cables in 1914. / NYC Municipal Archives One of the summer interns asked to meet with me as our...
Medals
A circle of imagination and engineering in 1893. / LOC I’ll happily admit that when I first saw a photo of the Olympic medals for Paris, I said, “What are...
Acres
Maryland kids slide and splash in summer 1942. / LOC When I talk to people about archives and their potential, I highlight the surprising expansiveness well...
Pockets
An unidentified model poses in an image by renowned photographer Nina Leen. / LIFE I was wandering through the library of a small local college several years...