Graphic Witness is a site dedicated to social commentary through graphic imagery by artists working from the turn of the 20th Century to the present, with related bibliographic and biographic data. The nature of the site is to focus on artists that sought to bring social change by illuminating particular historical moments in their work. As such, the site is organized mainly into individual pages for each artist. With over fifty artists profiled, as well as dozens of individual publications and links, this is a site literally packed with information and images. Users may be frustrated by the site’s lack of a search engine, but the explicitly political intent of the site rewards a more casual browsing experience, and the site map is helpful if looking for specific images. In addition, the site’s careful attention to outside sources of graphic social commentary (with links), such as an entire section of supplemental information and images surrounding Russian poster art, makes for a virtually endless exploration of this historically important genre of visual art.

Allan Holtz is a historian of American culture who specializes in newspaper comic strips of the past 150 years. In the course of this research, Holtz discovers and catalogs a vast amount of newspaper comic strips from every era of American history. His popular blog The Stripper’s Guide discusses the history of this important art form and showcases selections from Holtz’s own collection of rare comic strips. The result is a deeply informative website about another often-overlooked form of visual expression that has played a significant role in America’s cultural history. An obvious fanatic and veritable expert on the subject, Holtz posts a new image each day, accompanied by detailed explanations that provide historical context, aesthetic notes, and bits of artistic trivia. The main purpose of the site is to demonstrate the comic strip’s ever-changing role in American history, and Holtz accomplishes this with a dynamic combination of scholarly insight and digital technology, embedding his images within a blog framework that allows for user comments, posted links, and primary sources all on the same page, making The Stripper’s Guide emerge as a valuable online discussion of the intersection of art and history.

This online exhibit from the American Memory Project at the Library of Congress collects and displays the work of photographer Carl Van Vechten (1880-1964), known for his striking black and white portraits of prominent cultural figures of the mid-twentieth century. Van Vechten had a particular interest in photographing black artists and activists, and as a result this collection includes many rarely seen images of important leaders of the 1930s to 1950s. Visitors can browse the occupational index listing, which organizes the portraits into categories such as artists, authors, poets, singers, and sports figures.

The Robert Runyon Photograph Collection of the South Texas Border Area, a collection of over 8,000 items, is a unique visual resource documenting the Lower Rio Grande Valley during the early 1900s. Donated by the Runyon family to the Center for American History in 1986, it includes glass negatives, lantern slides, nitrate negatives, prints, and postcards, representing the life's work of commercial photographer Robert Runyon (1881-1968), a longtime resident of South Texas. His photographs document the history and development of South Texas and the border, including the Mexican Revolution, the U.S. military presence at Fort Brown and along the border prior to and during World War I, and the growth and development of the Rio Grande Valley. Because of the sheer size of this collection, the photos are simply arranged by category (like “Dwellings,” “Automobiles,” or “Mexican Military”), where users can view alphabetical lists or thumbnail galleries. This site stands out because of its careful attention to the digitization, preservation, and cataloging of this unique collection of rarely-showcased historical photographs.

For users interested in the artistic interpretations of soldiers at war, particularly World War II, this site will prove useful and engaging. The use of artistic expression to convey the experience of war and the battlefield has been around since antiquity, and has given rise to glorious poetry, epic stories, and more recently, paintings. This online exhibit hosted by the Australian War Memorial presents the experiences of Australians, Britons, and Canadians in the Second World War through paintings created during this turbulent period. As the homepage suggests, the men and women that feature in these works are shown waiting, preparing, fighting, suffering, and celebrating. First-time visitors will want to start by reading the introductory essay by Roger Tolson. The paintings themselves are grouped into thematic categories that include “Casualties,” “Work,” “Battle,” and “Home.” The site is rounded by brief biographies for each of the artists whose work is displayed.