01/20/2025
Over the past two years, our Imaging Lab has taken part in the multi-department effort to preserve and digitize the "Daily Worker and Daily World Photographs Collection" funded by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC).
Currently housed in the Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, the collection consists of roughly 185,000 photographic negative images across several formats.
"Photographic negatives are my favorite materials that our lab works with," says Michael Stasiak, Digital Content Manager at NYU Libraries, "precisely because they require a transformation in order to be useful to a researcher. Our lab uses high-resolution cameras originally developed for commercial fashion photography to capture detail down to the grain level of the film, then transforms those photos into positive images for publication. With this collection, the result is going to be a huge trove of expressive, electrifying, never-before-seen photojournalism."
The photographers for the "Daily Worker" (later the "Daily World") turned their lenses to the tectonic events of the 20th century: labor strikes, protests, marches.
"The powerful thing about these images is that they refuse nostalgia, our urge to freeze the past and hurry onward to a comfortable and unashamed future," says Stasiak. "People today are still striking, protesting, and marching for the same kind of recognition and respect that invigorated the people in these photographs from 60 years ago."�
Slide 1: Memorial Service for Martin Luther King, Jr and Demonstration for Making his Birthday a National Holiday. March from 8th Street and Broadway to Manhattan Center, New York, New York.
Slide 2: Memorial To Martin Luther King by New York University Interfaith Council, Washington Square Park, New York, New York.
Slide 3: Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Parade, Park Slope, Brooklyn, New York. Photos by Bill Andrews.
Slide 4: Harlem Memorial March For Martin Luther King, Jr., Down 7th Avenue from 145th Street to Central Park Mall, New York, New York.
Slide 5: Resurrection City, Washington, District of Columbia.