http://www.flickr.com/groups/sff2007/ Share your images of the 2007 Smithsonian Folklife Festival! Throughout the festival (June 27-July 1 and July 4-8, 2007), a selection of the images posted to the SFF2007 flickr group will be highlighted on the Smithsonian Photography Initiative's website, <a href="http://photography.si.edu/exhibitions.aspx">photography.si.edu/exhibitions.aspx</a>, alongside images by Smithsonian photographers, interns, and volunteers. At the end of the Festival, the photos contributed by Festival visitors will be organized into a final online exhibition. The images will additionally be shared with the archives of both the Smithsonian Photography Initiative and the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. The 2007 Smithsonian Folklife Festival Photo Sharing Project strives to strengthen both the mission of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival to promote cultural democracy, visitor participation, and cross-cultural conversation and the Smithsonian Photography Initiative's mission to document how photography plays an integral role in our lives and throughout the Smithsonian. About the Smithsonian Folklife Festival The Smithsonian Folklife Festival is an international exposition of living cultural heritage annually produced outdoors on the National Mall of the United States in Washington, D.C., by the Smithsonian Institution's Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. The Festival takes place for two weeks every summer overlapping the Fourth of July holiday. It is an educational presentation that features community-based cultural exemplars. Free to the public, like other Smithsonian museums, each Festival typically draws more than one million visitors. This year, the 41st Annual Smithsonian Folklife Festival runs from June 27-July 8 on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. and features the following: The Mekong River: Connecting Cultures, Northern Ireland at the Smithsonian, and Roots of Virginia Culture: Celebrating the 400th Anniversary of Virginia. <a href="http://www.folklife.si.edu/">www.folklife.si.edu/</a> <a href="http://www.smithsonianglobalsound.org/">www.smithsonianglobalsound.org/</a> About the Smithsonian Photography Initiative The Smithsonian Photography Initiative (SPI) creates opportunities for innovative new uses of images and photography throughout the Smithsonian. Through its award winning website, <a href="http://www.photography.si.edu/">www.photography.si.edu/</a> , SPI provides a platform for engaging visitors in an open dialogue about photography and its influence on society. From its founding in 1846 the Smithsonian has used photography to record and collect human culture. Cameras accompanied each Smithsonian expedition and the images brought back from all over the world carried information about people and places that most Americans would never otherwise experience. Many of the photographs now in the Smithsonian's vast collections of photography were taken not by professional photographers but by the expedition participants- explorers, scientists, geologists, biologists, engineers, etc.-whose point of view was as individual as the nature of their task. Wed, 31 Oct 2007 03:41:10 -0700 Wed, 31 Oct 2007 03:41:10 -0700 http://www.flickr.com/ http://farm2.staticflickr.com/1435/buddyicons/374807@N24.jpg?1182778776 http://www.flickr.com/groups/sff2007/