Tweeting Black History Month
In celebration of Black History Month in February, the Libraries and Archives of the Autry Twitter account @LA_Autry highlighted a book or item from our collections each weekday that featured African Americans. If you missed any of our tweets, have a look at our gallery below. Use Collections Online and our library catalog to discover … Read more
Marry Me
When I started as the Archival Assistant for the Theo Westenberger Archive, my first task was to examine and describe the contents of every box in the Theo Westenberger Archive. Because there are 400 boxes of pictures and documents, I was prepared to find the task overwhelming. But I was not prepared to find the … Read more
The Art of Standing Out
From the Theo Westenberger Archives: The Art of Standing Out For thirty years, Theo Westenberger succeeded as a commercial photographer in New York and Hollywood in a highly competitive market. Effective self-promotion was the key to standing out in a crowd of talented professionals and Theo excelled at this. In addition to amusing privately printed … Read more
Hand-Colored Delights
Theo Westenberger experimented with many different techniques as she learned the craft of photography, but one technique she continually used in her personal and commercial work was the hand-coloring of black-and-white prints. In this regard she joins a long tradition of colorization, a technique employed by photographic artists since photography began. The daguerreotype process was … Read more
“Look at Me!”
As we delve deeper into the extensive Theo Westenberger Archive at the Autry, we wanted to share one aspect of her work that truly reflects Westenberger’s joyful personality: her approach to self-promotion. When she wanted to draw attention to her work during the Christmas season, she asked her friends and clients—quite literally—to “look at me!” … Read more
