Photography
Scope
This overview deals with the photographic collections in the custody of the Prints and Photographs Division and related books and serials in the general collections.
Size
The photographic collections, including photographic prints, negatives, and transparencies, make up an estimated 13 million items. These collections include architectural photographs and negatives. The Library has over 17,000 books and serials on photography.
General Research Strengths
The Library's general research strength in this area is in the pictorial documentation of American history, of the achievements and concerns of the peoples of the United States, and of the history of the cities, landscape, and the built environment of the United States from 1839 (the year of photography's introduction) to the present. Secondarily, the Library has established strength in the documentation of historical events, individuals, and trends outside of the United States with emphasis on those having an important impact or influence upon American history and government, or having a significant bearing on American foreign policy, presence, or national interests abroad. Additionally the Library's collections serve as an important resource on the history and uses of photography in the United States from 1845 to the present. The photographic serials contain photogravures and albumin prints from many late 19th- and early 20th-century photographers.
Areas of Distinction
The following are the major fields in which the Library's photography collections are unsurpassed in the nation.
Documentation of the American Civil War. The Library's Brady-Handy archive includes a major portion of the studio of Civil War photographer Matthew Brady. Ancillary to this resource are the Library's holdings of field work by other major Civil War photographers, such as Alexander Gardiner and George Barnard, and several hundred portraits of officers and troops by various photographers.
Documentation of American Photojournalists. Aside from Brady and others' coverage of the American Civil War, the Library's documentary holdings include two of the monuments of American photography in the documentary tradition: Lewis Hine's National Child Labor Committee photographs, and the Farm Security Administration - Office of War Information archive. Another area of distinction is journalistic photography, including: the morgues of the Bain Photo Service, the National Photo Service, and other early twentieth-century news picture agencies; the morgues of Look magazine and of the U.S. News and World Report, and the New York World, Telegram, and Sun newspapers. The Library also owns the archive of photojournalist Toni Frissell.
American Architectural Photography. The Library owns the archives, or substantial portions of same, of several American architectural photographers Frances Benjamin Johnston, Samuel Gottscho, Theodor Horydczak, and Sigurd Fisher. These document American architecture from the 1890s through the 1940s.
American Pictorialist Photography. The Library owns an archive of the influential American pictorialist photographer F. Holland Day, and a broad representation of the works of other figures of this artistic photography movement in the United States, including Gertrude Kasebier, Clarence White, and Laura Gilpin.
American Portrait Photography. Archives of several notable portrait photographers are held by the Library, including: the daguerreotype portraits of Matthew Brady; Arnold Genthe's portraits of American artists, literati, and society figures of the early twentieth century; and Carl Van Vechten's portraits of American entertainers and literary and political figures from the 1930s - 1960s.
Photographic Documentation of Russia and other former Soviet republics, Slavic and Moslem Asia, from the 1850s to World War I. The Library has the most extensive existing public collection in the United States of photographs documenting this region. Notable are a number of photographic projects recording the people, landscape, and buildings of these regions, including: Roger Fenton's documentation of the troops and theatre of the Crimean War; a series of albums of the peoples, buildings, and life in Turkestan, early 1870s; and Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii's extensive photographic documentation of the Russian Empire just prior to World War I.
Photographic Documentation of the Middle East from the 1860s through World War I. The lands encompassed by the former Ottoman Empire were extensively documented by Western photographers in the late nineteenth century. The Library has the most extensive American public collection of photographs produced of the region during the period.
Weaknesses/Exclusions
A collection which covers such a wide range of subjects will inevitably have numerous gaps and weaknesses.
In general the Library, like most other American collecting institutions, has inadequate representation in its collections of the significant achievements and contributions to American history and culture of certain American ethnic and racial groups. P&P has for several years been engaged in an effort to redress this. In the field of non-U.S. photography, there is little photographic documentation of certain regions for which the Library has maintained strong area studies interest, such as Latin America (except for Panama) and Africa.
In general, apart from the photographic morgues noted above, recent American photography is only sparsely represented, affecting some areas of distinction described above. For instance, the Library has only scattered examples of the works of the first line of pioneering photojournalists from the late 1940s onward. These include figures such as Robert Capa, Robert Frank, Margaret Bourke-White, Weegee, W. Eugene Smith, Danny Lyon, William Klein, and others. Also inadequately represented are the major innovators in the field of artistic or master photography for the same period.
