Snapshots of the Past

Whale head – Historic Print

Whale head, 1900-1927 — historic image
Whale head, 1900-1927. Historic image from the Sailing & Yachts collection.

(Each image is professionally and digitally cleaned of artifacts such as color bars and extra borders prior to printing.)

Description

A window into the past: Whale head, preserved in this historic image. Drawn from the Snapshots of the Past archive, it is an authentic piece of documented history.

The framed print arrives ready to hang; the unframed option suits custom framing. A conversation-starting piece for home, office, or as a meaningful gift. Free shipping in the lower 48 states. Snapshots of the Past, founded in 2001, has served tens of thousands of customers worldwide.

Whale head

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The title makes the subject plain: a whale's head, the part of the animal that was often the heaviest and most cumbersome to handle once a catch was brought in. The picture comes from the Frank and Frances Carpenter collection at the Library of Congress, a body of travel photographs made between about 1900 and 1927. Whaling in that era still relied heavily on processing whales on shore or aboard ships, where crews cut up carcasses for oil, baleen, and other products. Looking closely at the scale of the head against the people or equipment around it shows how much labor a single whale demanded.

Created / published1900-1927
SubjectsForms part of: Frank and Frances Carpenter collection (Library of Congress).
Original scan5,004 × 4,042 px · prints to 17 × 13 in at 300 dpi
Reference5

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