Fireworks! The Brooklyn Bridge’s 125th anniversary

A recent post on NYC Social alerted us to the Brooklyn Bridge’s upcoming 125th anniversary celebration (May 22nd-26th), featuring fireworks on the 22nd. Fireworks have to be one of my favorite NYC treats, from the 4th of July to the display over the beach at Coney Island on summer Friday nights. Artists–and photographers, especially–love fireworks, too. It’s a real challenge to capture the magic.

1996.167_PS2.jpg

Bruce Cratsley (American, 1944–1998). Brooklyn Bridge Centennial Fireworks, 1983.
Gelatin silver print. Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Billy Leight, 1996.167. © Bruce Cratsley

There’s a long tradition of fireworks over the Brooklyn Bridge, from its opening in 1883 to the centennial in 1983, and I’d venture to guess that every one of them has been captured by artists. A few years ago, we digitized everything we could find in the Museum collection that had to do with the Brooklyn Bridge, including some wonderful fireworks images. Take a look at The Brooklyn Bridge and the Brooklyn Museum: Spanning Art and History.

There must be thousands (millions?) of photographs around from the last big celebration in 1983, in shoeboxes, slide carousels, and all of other analog places. This time, though, it’s going to be easier to share all of the digital images sure to be created during the 5-day celebration. Join our Brooklyn Bridge (Brooklyn Museum Web site) Group on Flickr and add your amazing fireworks images to the more than 900 images of “our” bridge on Flickr and linked to the Brooklyn Bridge pages on Museum website.

Deborah Wythe

Deborah Wythe

Deborah Wythe manages the Brooklyn Museum’s Digital Collections and Services department (the “Digital Lab”), coordinating digital imaging activities museum-wide, including the photo studio, scan lab, digital asset management, and rights and reproductions. Before moving to the Digital Lab, Deb was the Museum Archivist, where she managed the Museum’s historical records and worked on several technology-driven projects. Deb edited the new edition of Museum Archives: An Introduction, published by the Society of American Archivists in 2004, and wrote the chapters on the museum context, appraisal, description, records surveys, and photographs. Prior to joining the Brooklyn Museum staff, she worked on the Steinway Collection at the LaGuardia and Wagner Archives and, as an intern, organized the records of the Department of Musical Instruments at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In her previous life, before discovering archives work (she has always been a museum maven), Deb earned her Master’s and PhD in musicology at NYU. She still studies the piano.

Saturday, May 17th, 2008
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Digital Lab, Photography