Always good to see poster collections being digitised:
The U.S. government produced thousands of posters during World Wars I and II, urging citizens to buy war bonds, ration food, grow victory gardens, limit travel and avoid loose talk.
Now roughly 520 of those posters are available online, through Washington State University’s newPropaganda Poster Digital Collection.
Read full story, or read similar on Washington State University site.
If you haven’t already come across this book, it’s a great mix of text & picture. I hadn’t realised there was an exhibition in London, running til next Thursday – wonder if I can managed to nip out and see it… nipping doesn’t seem to be operative, as it’s in Camden Town and I’m in Pimlico. Hmm, we’ll see… Always great to see the original posters!
“Rarely viewed by the outside world, this collection of posters from the 1950s to the present encompasses a politically significant period in Vietnamese history. With their boldly rendered images of Ho Chi Minh and local heroes; guerrilla fighters, tanks and bombers; factory workers and the urban and rural landscape, these posters-many produced in small numbers under economically adverse conditions-reverberate with vibrant colors and innovative graphic language, revealing much about the country’s cultural and political climate. An overview of the collection shows how imagery from indigenous folk art, the work of French-trained nationally acclaimed artists, as well as Russian and Chinese propaganda styles have all influenced the unusual, graphically diverse styles of these posters. This collection offers a deeply resonating, visually arresting social history of a country during times of peace and war.
DAVID HEATHER is a businessman, curator, and collector of North Korean and Vietnamese art and the co-author of North Korean Posters (Prestel). He lives in London.SHERRY BUCHANAN is a former editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal and the International Herald Tribune. She is the publisher of Asia Ink and the author of several books on art, history, and culture.”
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“This collection boasts more than 1000 Soviet political posters spanning the whole Soviet era from February 1917 to December 1991.
Sergo Grigorian has meticulously constructed a collection of political posters, deliberately disregarding other interesting Soviet themes such as cinema, circus, theatre, sports and advertising (except those with clear underlying political meaning). In addition, Sergo Grigorian collects a wide range of literature and photographic materials related to the Soviet poster. Most recent acquisitions are found at the top of the general list of posters.
You can view the collection by catalogue number, year and author. All the posters are divided into groups and subgroups by category, historical period, author, series (e.g. The Fighting Pencil series), place of publication or edition, style, technique of manufacture etc.”
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“Cheerless and drab but ‘full of amazing stuff’. The British Library Newspapers collection at Colindale is moving and also becoming increasingly digitised. Huw Richards wonders if researchers will miss the feel of the paper beneath their fingers
// The journey to the far reaches of the Northern Line’s Edgware branch always did feel rather like time travel – an impression accentuated about 20 years ago when London Underground managers admitted that, on the “next train” indicators on that creaky, rattling stretch of line, one minute really was longer than 60 seconds.
Head out of the Tube station, cross the road and there stands the 1930s blockhouse that houses British Library Newspapers, known simply to its users as Colindale. There can be few historians, at least those concerned with the history of modern Britain, who have not made that journey. For many doctoral students it was the foundation of their research, requiring months of sustained attention to bound volumes and microfilm.
Not, however, for much longer. The announcement in mid-October of a £33 million capital grant, part of a government package for the cultural and creative industries, was Colindale’s death sentence. The hard copies – a collection estimated to total 750 million newspaper pages – will go to a new, purpose-built facility at Boston Spa in Yorkshire, while the 400,000 reels of micro-film and digital access will move to join the rest of the British Library at St Pancras, nine stops and 26 minutes down the Northern Line.”
Read full story. I spent MANY HOURS in Colindale researching material for my PhD