Words on Pictures: Romana Javitz and the New York Public Library's Picture Collection

In the pre-digital era, the age of mechanical reproduction, the New York Public Library's Picture Collection provided the free circulation of prints, photographs, postcards and other clippings to its constituency of artists, illustrators, advertisers, and businessmen. It was, in essence, the Google Images of its day. Since its initial beginnings in 1914 the Picture Collection has been a unique public service for New York City's thriving educational, cultural and commercial enterprises, both as a muse and as a critical resource. The story of the Picture Collection is also the story of Romana Javitz (1903-1980) who headed the Picture Collection from 1929 to 1968. Words on Pictures presents previously unpublished writings and interviews by Javitz, revealing her remarkable understanding of the social impact of print and film media, especially photography and cinema.

Words on Images presents an array of reports, speeches, and white papers written by Javitz, many published for the first time, that show her firm grasp of the dialectic of visual literacy. Also included are two interviews of Javitz and her own interview of the photographer Sol Libsohn (1914-2001), revealing Javitz's innate understanding of photography and its place in the public. It is through her written word that we can witness history best and Words on Pictures delivers.

The media companies located in New York City during these years, with all its productive exuberance, generated massive amounts of printed media on paper, much of which ended up in the Picture Collection's stock. This picture stock became a form of visual evidence of the cultural and commercial output of any given decade. What the Picture Collection did was classify these images as subjects and allowed the public to repurposed them into new documents, new meanings, new ideas. 

The historical record of the Picture Collection is largely complete and housed at the New York Public Library's Manuscripts and Archives Division. It is a testament to the work of the Picture Collection's administrators and staff who over the years served the visual needs of its clients: businessmen, artists, teachers, librarians and the general public. The records Javitz and her predecessors and successors preserved offer a window into the cultural use of pictures for over 100 years. It will remain an important source for historians and students for years to come.