Toni Frissell Collection

Photographs and papers

Manuscript Division

Prints and Photographs Division

In 1970 Toni Frissell donated to the Library a massive collection of photographs, negatives, and manuscripts documenting her distinguished photographic career of nearly forty years. While Frissell photographed subjects as diverse as the Berlin Wall and the 1968 Republican National Convention, she is perhaps best known for her pioneering fashion photography and her informal portraits of the famous and powerful in the United States and Europe, including Winston Churchill, Eleanor Roosevelt, and John and Jacqueline Kennedy. Frissell's photographs were published in such magazines as Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, and Sports Illustrated. Her photographs also appeared in photographically illustrated versions of A Child's Garden of Verses (1944), [Bermuda]:The Happy Island (1946), Mother Goose (1948) and The King Ranch, 1939-1944 (1975).

440,000 items, including 340,000 black-and-white negatives, 52,950 color transparencies, 22,419 contact sheets, and 25,000 enlargement prints, as well as proof sheets. Frissell's own selection of about 1,800 of her best and most representative photographs (LOT 12452), provides a helpful entrée to the collection. Elements of the collection can be searched in the online catalog:

• descriptions of groups of contact sheets for photographs taken 1955-
• descriptions of thematic groups (LOTs) containing contact sheets and enlargement prints
• items digitized for special projects or for which copy photography has been requested.

The Washington, D.C., related groups are also described in Washingtoniana Photographs: Collections in the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1989). Selections from the Frissell Collection are published in Photographs, 1933-1967, Toni Frissell (New York: Doubleday in association with the Library of Congress, 1994).

The accompanying personal papers of Toni Frissell have been transferred to the Manuscript Division.

Note: Information for this entry was compiled in the late 1970's for inclusion in: Special Collections in the Library of Congress: A Selective Guide. Compiled by Annette Melville. Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1980. The entry was revised in 1998, 2012, and 2021.

U.S. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, "Acquisition Notes," Library of Congress Information Bulletin, v. 30, May 27, 1971: 303-304.

Go to:

• Toni Frissell Biographical Essay and Image Sampler
• Women Come to the Front exhibit - Toni Frissell