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Your search found 92719 records from National Museum of American History collection..
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Replica of 1840 Voigtlä nder, World’s First Metal Camera
- Description
- The first Daguerreotype cameras introduced in 1839 were fitted with simple slow-speed lenses, and this made exposure times long, from two to ten minutes or more, even in bright sunlight. The long exposure times made taking portraits difficult and usually required the subject to be seated and the head held steady with neck braces.
- In 1840 Joseph Petzval, a Professor of Mathematics at Vienna University, designed a portrait lens that was twenty times faster than the Chevalier lenses fitted to the first Daguerreotype cameras. The Petzval lens gave superb sharpness at the center of the image and was less sharp towards the edges. The lens was ideal for portraits and reduced exposure times to a minute or less.
- The brass Voigtländer Daguerreotype "Cannon" camera was one of the first cameras to use the Petzval portrait lens. This camera was originally introduced in 1841 and took 80mm circular images on Daguerreotype plates. The model shown here is one of a small number of replicas with serial number 84 made in 1978 to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the Voigtländer Company.
- From its invention in 1839, the camera has evolved to fit many needs, from aerial to underwater photography and everything in between. Cameras allow both amateur and professional photographers to capture the world around us. The Smithsonian’s historic camera collection includes rare and unique examples of equipment, and popular models, related to the history of the science, technology, and art of photography.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- maker
- Voightlander & Sohn
- ID Number
- PG*6075
- accession number
- 225469
- catalog number
- 6075
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Rolleiflex Twin-Lens Camera
- Description
- The Rolleiflex or “Rollei” twin lens camera was originally introduced in 1929 by Rollei-Werke, a German company. This 2.8 lens model, was popular in the 1960s. The construction and design of this 6x6cm medium format camera with its superior optics, mechanics, bright viewfinder, and exposure controls allowed for its quick acceptance by prominent professional photographers. Today, the digital versions of this camera are available.
- From its invention in 1839, the camera has evolved to fit many needs, from aerial to underwater photography and everything in between. Cameras allow both amateur and professional photographers to capture the world around us. The Smithsonian’s historic camera collection includes rare and unique examples of equipment, and popular models, related to the history of the science, technology, and art of photography.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- ca 1960s
- maker
- Franke & Heidecke
- ID Number
- PG*6492
- accession number
- 241890
- catalog number
- 6492
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Original Kodak Camera, Serial No. 2443
- Description
- George Eastman invented flexible roll film and in 1888 introduced the Kodak cameras shown to use this film. This camera is now known as the Original Kodak and it took 100 exposure rolls of film that gave circular images 2 5/8" in diameter. In 1888 the original Kodak sold for $25 loaded with a roll of film and included a leather carrying case.
- The Original Kodak was fitted with a rotating barrel shutter unique to this model. The shutter was set by pulling up a string on top of the camera and operated by pushing a button on the side of the camera. After taking a photograph a key on top of the camera was used to wind the film onto the next frame. There is no viewfinder on the camera; instead two V shaped lines on the top of the camera leather are intended to aid aiming the camera at the subject. The barrel shutter proved to be expensive to manufacture and unreliable in operation. The following year the shutter was replaced by a simpler sector shutter in the No 1 Kodak.
- After 100 pictures had been taken on the film strip the camera could be returned to the Kodak factory for developing and printing at a cost of $10. The camera, loaded with a fresh roll of film was returned with the negatives and mounted prints. Kodak advertisements from 1888 also state that any amateur could ‘finish his own pictures’ and spare rolls of film were sold for $2.
- From its invention in 1839, the camera has evolved to fit many needs, from aerial to underwater photography and everything in between. Cameras allow both amateur and professional photographers to capture the world around us. The Smithsonian’s historic camera collection includes rare and unique examples of equipment, and popular models, related to the history of the science, technology, and art of photography.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1888
- maker
- Eastman Dry Plate and Film Company
- ID Number
- PG*6519
- catalog number
- 6519
- accession number
- 242983
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Lou Gehrig Wiping a Tear
- Description (Brief)
- This photograph was taken on Lou Gehrig Appreciation Day, held at New York’s Yankee Stadium, July 4, 1939. The event honored the retirement of the team’s long-time first baseman. Gehrig (1903-1941,) “The Iron Horse,” set a major league record for consecutive games played (2,130.) During the ceremony, the seven-time All-Star famously called himself “the luckiest man on the face of the Earth,” even though his retirement was precipitated by the onset of ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.) Today, ALS is commonly known as “Lou Gehrig’s Disease.”
- Date made
- 1939-07-04
- maker
- Becker, Murray L.
- ID Number
- PG*67.101.101
- accession number
- 272509
- catalog number
- 67.101.101
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Photograph of Caroline Kennedy holding her father's hand to her cheek
- Description
- This portrait by Richard Avedon of John Fitzgerald Kennedy and his daughter Caroline is from an exclusive 1961 pre-inaugural sitting at the Kennedy compound in Florida. The photo session included Jacqueline Kennedy and their son John Jr. This is one of six photographs of John Kennedy and his family that appeared in the February 1961 issue ofHarper's Bazaar as the first in a series of Observations by Avedon. The collection of Avedon photographs at the National Museum of American History includes photographs, tearsheets, contact prints, and negatives.
- Date made
- January 1961
- January 3, 1961
- 1961-01-03
- depicted
- Kennedy, Caroline
- photographer
- Avedon, Richard
- ID Number
- PG*67.102.075
- accession number
- 270571
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Pendulum (Small Arc)
- Description (Brief)
- Berenice Abbott's photograph, Pendulum (Small Arc), is a stop-motion photograph. Although the photographer is more well-known for her 1930s abstracted views of New York City's architecture, she wanted to improve the quality of photography for scientists.
- Abbott devised apparatus and techniques to capture various phenomena. Beginning in 1958, she created photographs for the Physical Science Study Committee, a program to reform high school physics teaching. This picture illustrating the swing of a pendulum appeared in 1969 in The Attractive Universe: Gravity and the Shape of Space.
- Description
- During the 1920s, Berenice Abbott was one of the premier portrait photographers of Paris, her only competitor was the equally well-known Dada Surrealist Man Ray who had served as her mentor and employer before she launched her own career. An American expatriate, Abbott enjoyed the company of some of the great twentieth century writers and artists, photographing individuals such as Jean Cocteau, Peggy Guggenheim and James Joyce. One of the critical elements of Abbott’s portraiture was a desire to neither enhance nor interfere with the sitter. She instead wished to allow the personality of her subject to dictate the form of the photograph, and would often sit with her clients for several hours before she even began to photograph them. This straight-forward approach to photography characterized Abbott’s work for the duration of her career.
- Thematically and technically, Abbott’s work can be most closely linked to documentary photographer Eugène Atget (COLL.PHOTOS.000016), who photographed Paris during the early 1900s. Abbott bought a number of his prints the first time she saw them, and even asked him to set some aside that she planned to purchase when she had enough money. After his death in 1927, Abbott took it upon herself to publicize Atget’s work to garner the recognition it deserved. It was partly for this reason she returned to the United States in 1928, hoping to find an American publisher to produce an English-language survey of Atget’s work. Amazed upon her arrival to see the changes New York had undergone during her stay in Paris, and eager to photograph the emerging new metropolis, Abbott decided to pack up her lucrative Parisian portrait business and move back to New York.
- The status and prestige she enjoyed in Paris, however, did not carry over to New York. Abbott did not fit in easily with her contemporaries. She was both a woman in a male-dominated field and a documentary photographer in the midst of an American photographic world firmly rooted in Pictorialism. Abbott recalls disliking the work of both photographer Alfred Stieglitz and his then protégé Paul Strand when she first visited their exhibitions in New York. Stieglitz, along with contemporaries such as Ansel Adams and Edward Steichen, tended to romanticize the American landscape and effectively dismissed Abbott’s straight photography as she saw it. Not only was Atget’s work rejected by the Pictorialists, but a series of critical comments she made towards Stieglitz and Pictorialism cost Abbott her professional career as a photographer. Afterwards, she was unable to secure space at galleries, have her work shown at museums or continue the working relationships she had forged with a number of magazine publications.
- In 1935, the Federal Art Project outfitted Abbott with equipment and a staff to complete her project to photograph New York City. The benefit of a personal staff and the freedom to determine her own subject matter was unique among federally funded artists working at that time. The resulting series of photographs, which she titled Changing New York, represent some of Abbott’s best-known work. Her photographs of New York remain one of the most important twentieth century pictorial records of New York City. Abbott went on to produce a series of photographs for varied topics, including scientific textbooks and American suburbs. When the equipment was insufficient to meet her photographic needs, as in the case of her series of science photographs, she invented the tools she needed to achieve the desired effect. In the course of doing so, Abbott patented a number of useful photographic aids throughout her career including an 8x10 patent camera (patent #2869556) and a photographer’s jacket. Abbott also spent twenty years teaching photography classes at the New School for Social Research alongside such greats as composer Aaron Copland and writer W.E.B. DuBois.
- Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of Abbott’s career was the printing of Eugène Atget’s photographs, one of the few instances in which one well-known photographer printed a large number of negatives made by another well-known photographer. The struggle to get Atget’s photographs the recognition they deserved was similar to Abbott’s efforts to chart her own path by bringing documentary photography to the fore in a Pictorialist dominated America. Though she experienced varying levels of rejection and trials in both efforts, her perseverance placed her in the position she now holds as one of the great photographers of the twentieth century.
- The Bernice Abbott collection consists of sixteen silver prints. The photographs represent a range of work Abbott produced during her lifetime, including her early portraiture work in Paris, her Changing New York series, Physics and Route 1, U.S.A. series.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1950s
- photographer
- Abbott, Berenice
- ID Number
- PG*69.216.15
- catalog number
- 69.216.15
- accession number
- 288852
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Sioux Indians on the Plains
- Description
- In 1898 New York photographer Gertrude Käsebier (1852-1934) embarked on a deeply personal project, creating a set of prints that rank among the most compelling of her celebrated body of work. Käsebier was on the threshold of a career that would establish her as both the leading portraitist of her time and an extraordinary art photographer. Her new undertaking was inspired by her first viewing the grand parade of Buffalo Bill's Wild West troupe en route to Madison Square Garden for several weeks of performances. She quickly sent a letter to William "Buffalo Bill" Cody (1846-1917), requesting permission to photograph in her studio the Sioux Indians traveling with the show. Within weeks, Käsebier began a unique and special project: photographing the Indian men, women, and children, formally and informally. Friendships developed, and her photography of these Native Americans continued for more than a decade.
- While Gertrude Käsebier primarily photographed her Native American subjects in the studio, there are existing photographs among her personal collection showing the Dakota Sioux Indians in the West, probably an area within their Pine Ridge Reservation, South Dakota, about 1900. To date, no correspondence has emerged regarding a trip for Käsebier to the Great Plains.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- ca 1898
- maker
- Kasebier, Gertrude
- ID Number
- PG*69.236.001
- accession number
- 287543
- catalog number
- 69.236.001
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Sioux Indians drawing in Kasebier's Studio
- Description
- In 1898 New York photographer Gertrude Käsebier (1852-1934) embarked on a deeply personal project, creating a set of prints that rank among the most compelling of her celebrated body of work. Käsebier was on the threshold of a career that would establish her as both the leading portraitist of her time and an extraordinary art photographer. Her new undertaking was inspired by viewing the grand parade of Buffalo Bill's Wild West troupe en route to Madison Square Garden for several weeks of performances. She quickly sent a letter to William "Buffalo Bill" Cody (1846-1917), requesting permission to photograph in her studio the Sioux Indians traveling with the show. Within weeks, Käsebier began a unique and special project photographing the Indian men, women, and children formally and informally. Friendships developed, and her photography of these Native Americans continued for more than a decade.
- Near the window of Käsebier's Fifth Avenue, New York, studio, two young Sioux men wait during the portrait session. Pausing momentarily from drawing, one glances outward, contemplating the vast city and skyscrapers.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- ca 1898
- referenced
- Buffalo Bill's Wild West and Frontier Exhibition
- maker
- Kasebier, Gertrude
- ID Number
- PG*69.236.005
- accession number
- 287543
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Native American Portraits by Gertrude Kasebier
- Description
- Waiting to be photographed by New York City photographer Gertrude Kasebier (1852-1934), Native Americans traveling with Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show sketch at a table in her studio on 5th Avenue, about 1898. William "Buffalo Bill" Cody selected nine Indians from his touring show to have their portraits made after receiving a letter of inquiry from Kasebier. The photographer maintained long friendships with a few of the Wild West Show's Indians, corresponding with them from 1898 to about 1912. Examples of these letters were published in Everybody's Magazine in January 1901.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- ca 1898
- maker
- Kasebier, Gertrude
- ID Number
- PG*69.236.006
- accession number
- 287543
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Sioux Indians photographed in Gertrude Kasebier's Studio
- Description
- In 1898 New York photographer Gertrude Käsebier (1852-1934) embarked on a deeply personal project, creating a set of prints that rank among the most compelling of her celebrated body of work. Käsebier was on the threshold of a career that would establish her as both the leading portraitist of her time and an extraordinary art photographer. Her new undertaking was inspired by viewing the grand parade of Buffalo Bill's Wild West troupe en route to Madison Square Garden for several weeks of performances.
- Käsebier had spent her childhood on the Great Plains, and retained many vivid, happy memories of playing with nearby Native American children. She quickly sent a letter to William "Buffalo Bill" Cody (1846-1917), requesting permission to photograph in her studio the Sioux Indians traveling with the show. Within a matter of weeks, Käsebier began a unique and special project, photographing the Indian men, women, and children, formally and informally. Friendships developed, and her photography of these Native Americans continued for more than a decade.
- The natural light provided by the single window in Gertrude Käsebier's studio accents this group portrait of the Sioux Indians chiefs and men visiting in April 1898. Käsebier often used lighting effectively in portraits to highlight her subjects. She created dramatic effects and strong visual lines through her technical skills in developing and printing the images.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- ca 1898
- maker
- Kasebier, Gertrude
- ID Number
- PG*69.236.007
- accession number
- 287543
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center