Relax, it's still summer!

 

 

 

Despite the back-to-school sales seen cropping up at the stores, according to the calendar it's still July and nearly a month before students return to classes here at Ball State University. It's still summer! Spend some time outside in the hammock, on the Adirondack, or a really cool mid-century chair before tackling that shopping list of pencils and Trapper Keepers.

Images: Russell Walcott patio photograph by Jessie Tarbox Beals, ca. 1935, Trowbridge and Beals Photographs; O. C. Catterlin house photograph for Fran Schroeder, 1952, Fran Schroeder Architectural Records; Lawn chair design drawing by Joseph Cezar, 1943. Drawings + Documents Archive, Ball State University.

Jessie Tarbox Beals: first woman photojournalist and architecture photographer

The Drawings + Documents Archive shares quite a few things with the Library of Congress. These are mostly drawings from the Historic American Building Survey (HABS) that were created by architecture students in the 1970s and 80s, but also photographic images by Jessie Tarbox Beals (1870-1942), a pioneering woman photographer who is known as being the first credited woman photojournalist.

In addition to news photography, she was also commissioned by architects to photograph their buildings, as represented above in this airy photograph depicting a sun-drenched patio at a Russell Walcott house which was most likely in northern Illinois or Michigan. To see more of her architecture images, browse our online collection. To learn more about Jessie Tarbox Beals and her interesting life, as well as to see some of her other work, visit the Library of Congress' website for an essay and selected images.

Image: Russell Walcott house exterior, ca. 1935. Trowbridge and Beals Photographs Collection, Drawings + Documents Archive, Archives and Special Collections, Ball State University Libraries.

Architects + Photographers

For anyone who doubts the power of photography to interpret architecture, I offer two examples. The first is our Trowbridge and Beals Photograph Collection, which showcases the work of two outstanding early 20th century architectural photographers and is now available online in Ball State University Libraries' Digital Media Repository.

Raymond W. Trowbridge (1886-1936) and Jessie Tarbox Beals (1870-1942) came to photography from different careers--he was an architect and she was a teacher--but both became well known in this burgeoning field.

The second example?

The film Visual Acoustics: The Modernism of Julius Shulman.