Summer Internship: Uptown Wednesday

Most Wednesdays, I head uptown to the Time Life offices to work for the Getty representative there (Getty licenses the archive of Life magazine images.) The catch with the Life collection is that most has not been scanned or not scanned properly, so if a client wants to license one of the many incredible images, someone has to go back to the physical archive of contact sheets and film strips, find the right film strip, and scan it to the computer. It may sound boring, but as a bit of a photography geek, I was enthralled; I was literally handling the film that rolled through Nina Leen's camera, I was organizing original content taken by the greats of photographic history like Margaret Bourke-White, seeing the contact sheets where J.R. Eyerman had crossed out an image here or circled an image there. I was holding these incredible pieces of history, most of which have never been seen by more than a select few. It was an awesome experience. Being uptown among the bustling businessmen and women in their matching suits and clacking heels, I adopt a little less casual style than when I'm downtown. Well, however less casual black and white and a little bling can be; though I'm working in a back room alone with the archives, it's still fun to channel the area -- with my own pale pink twist. (I wore an embellished white tank from Ann Taylor, black Guess skinny jeans, black G by Guess heels, a pale pink Zara blazer, crystal necklace from Target, and crystal earrings from Banana Republic.)

Photo credit: Connor Byrnes 

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