Harris & Ewing's funny Washington

The studio that covered the city

George W. Harris and Martha Ewing opened a photographic studio in Washington in 1905. It grew into a news picture service with photographers all over the capital, and for decades if a paper needed a senator, a hearing, a debutante, or a visiting horse, Harris & Ewing was a likely source. The Library of Congress holds the collection. The rights line on these prints is the one the Library uses when it has found no restriction: no known restrictions on publication.

A news studio lives on the serious frames. It also lives on the ones that make a city look like itself. Washington in these pictures is hot, fond of animals, and willing to be ridiculous in public. The jokes are in the captions the studio filed. They are not punch lines added later.

One hundred degrees, and a desk that was a shower

In 1922 the temperature in the shade hit one hundred degrees, and an office still had letters to get out. Stenographer Margerite Newman took dictation in a bathing suit, standing under a cooling shower. Harris & Ewing sent a photographer. The Library of Congress files the negative as item 2016886657. The papers liked it because the heat was the news and the picture was the proof. A woman did the job in the only place the room was bearable. The camera arrived in time.

That is the picture to start with, because it has a name, a temperature, and a task. Newman is working. The shower is a tool. The joke, such as it is, belongs to the weather. Hang it where people stand close enough to read a face. It is a portrait of a job, taken on a day when the job moved.

Two cats and a senator in a box

Curious Tom was the favorite cat at the Washington pound. On the day of the pound's Christmas party for strays, in 1936, he walked up to the photographer's camera and inspected it. Item 2016871019. The caption is doing what a good animal caption does. It names the cat, names the occasion, and then gets out of the way, because Tom is already doing the work.

Three years later a stray walked into the Senate Office Building and ended up on the desk of Rosalie Sutton, a staffer for Senator Claude Pepper of Florida. The studio made the picture, item 2016874819, before the cat had been there as long as most freshmen. Sutton is the person. Pepper is the office. The cat is the visitor who understood a desk.

The same year, 1939, Senator Allen Ellender of Louisiana sat sealed in an electric-lamp steam cabinet with only his head showing. The studio caption says the cabinet was there to take off that bit of softness. Item 2016875263. Ellender looks like a man who has agreed to be boiled in public, which is a specific kind of political courage, or a specific kind of August. The line about softness is the caption's line. It is funnier left in the caption's voice than retold.

The largest, the smallest, and Alex

At a Washington dog show in 1923, Harris & Ewing put the biggest dog in the hall next to the smallest and let the scale make the picture. Item 2016891984. Sight gags are older than any one photographer. This one is simply well built: two animals, one floor, no props required. The print is a lesson in standing the right distance from a joke.

Alex, in 1924, belonged to Ailsa Mellon, daughter of Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon. He was a German shepherd. The studio caption says he smokes cigarettes n'everything, and that his father was a twelve-thousand-dollar champion. Item 2016893570. The smoking is the caption's claim, filed with the negative. The dog's expression does the rest. Mellon money, a champion bloodline, and a prop cigarette: Washington, doing what Washington does, which is mixing a private joke with a public office.

Six pictures, one studio, a heat wave, two cats, a steam cabinet, and two dogs. The Library's numbers are on the sources below. The hang is easy. Newman in the middle, because she is working. The cats to one side, Ellender to the other, the dogs as a pair. Funny Washington, it turns out, kept excellent records.