Library Seeks Halloween Photos for Folklife Collection

AFC invites people to document in photographs how holiday celebrations are experienced by friends, family and community.
Photo by: congerdesign

The American Folklife Center (AFC) at the Library of Congress is inviting Americans participate in holidays at the end of October and early November – Halloween, All Souls Day, All Saints Day, Dia de los Muertos – to photograph hayrides, haunted houses, parades, trick-or-treating and other celebratory and commemorative activities to contribute to a new collection documenting contemporary folklife.

AFC invites people to document in photographs how holiday celebrations are experienced by friends, family and community, then post photos to the photo-sharing site Flickr under a creative commons license with the tag #FolklifeHalloween2019.

The following are guidelines:

1. Title: Give your photo a title
2. Short Description (including photographer and location): Include a brief description. What is significant about the image? Where was it taken? Who is the photographer?
3. License: For potential inclusion in the collection, please license the photo under a creative commons license.

Additional information is available on the Library of Congress website.

AFC will explore the stream of photographs shared on Flickr and pick a selection of images to be archived. Of particular interest are images that capture the diversity of practices, people and places that are distinctive in their association with these holidays. Selected images accessioned by the Library will be shared via the blog Folklife Today in a series of blog posts beginning in November 2014. Depending on the response to this project, AFC may continue using this method to collect documentation of other holidays and other topics.

The Library’s collections are full of assets collected by documentarians and folklorists including Alan Lomax, Sidney Robertson Cowell and Dorothea Lange, whose work and contributions have inspired this project.

The American Folklife Center was created by Congress in 1976 and placed at the Library of Congress to "preserve and present American Folklife" through programs of research, documentation, archival preservation, reference service, live performance, exhibition, public programs and training. The center includes an archive of folk culture, which was established in the Library in 1928 and is now one of the largest collections of ethnographic material from the United States and around the world.

The Library of Congress, the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution and the largest library in the world, holds more than 158 million items in various languages, disciplines and formats. The Library serves the U.S. Congress and the nation both on-site in its reading rooms on Capitol Hill and through its award-winning website at www.loc.gov.