Photography

Leica 35mm Camera

The millions of photographs in the Museum's collections compose a vast mosaic of the nation's history. Photographs accompany most artifact collections. Thousands of images document engineering projects, for example, and more record the steel, petroleum, and railroad industries.

Some 150,000 images capture the history, art, and science of photography. Nineteenth-century photography, from its initial development by W. H. F. Talbot and Louis Daguerre, is especially well represented and includes cased images, paper photographs, and apparatus. Glass stereographs and news-service negatives by the Underwood & Underwood firm document life in America between the 1890s and the 1930s. The history of amateur photography and photojournalism are preserved here, along with the work of 20th-century masters such as Richard Avedon and Edward Weston. Thousands of cameras and other equipment represent the technical and business side of the field.

Place: New York

General Charles De Gaulle and Mayor, Fiorello H. LaGuardia

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1945-08-27
depicted (sitter)
La Guardia, Fiorello H.
DeGaulle, Charles
ID Number
2013.0327.1160
accession number
2013.0327
catalog number
2013.0327.1160

Suspension Bridge, Brooklyn Bridge

Platinum print, matted; Suspension bridge, Brooklyn Bridge. Signed and dated on mat, pencil. Verso: handwritten "Not for sale."The Paul Outerbridge collection consists of six platinotype prints and five 5 Carbro color prints.
Description (Brief)
Platinum print, matted; Suspension bridge, Brooklyn Bridge. Signed and dated on mat, pencil. Verso: handwritten "Not for sale."
Description
The Paul Outerbridge collection consists of six platinotype prints and five 5 Carbro color prints. In 1959, the Smithsonian Institution collected these eleven prints from Paul Outerbridge’s widow to produce a solo exhibition of his work. Outerbridge was known as a pioneer in the school of modern photography. “He was capable of transforming everyday objects into virtual abstractions in which harmonious patterns of mass and line, light and shade superseded our conventional perceptions of such objects.” Through Outerbridge’s work in both black and white and color photography, he transformed the general artistic concerns of the avant-garde into the language of photography.
Paul Outerbridge, Jr. (1896-1958) was born to a prominent surgeon’s family in Manhattan, New York City on August 15, 1896. Upon his return from military service and contrary to his family’s wishes, Outerbridge shied away from a traditional university education, deciding instead to pursue a career in the arts. In 1921, he studied in the Clarence White School of Photography in New York. Outerbridge took easily to the medium. In 1922 he was published for the first time in Vogue magazine.
Outerbridge married first wife Paula Smith in 1925 and the young couple immediately moved to Paris. There he studied with such avant-garde artists as Marcel Duchamp. In 1928 Outerbridge and Smith separated. He moved to Berlin to become involved in the emerging German cinema.
Unsuccessful in making the transition to film, Outerbridge returned to New York City in 1929. However, he was unhappy with the city life and built a studio in his country home to resume his photographic work. Outerbridge was one of the first photographers to fully appreciate the impact color photography would make on the field. He developed a version of the Carbro color process, a combination of Carbon tissues and Bromide prints used to create permanent, extra-dimensional prints.
Outerbridge’s prints were mainly created for commercial purposes. However, privately he was fascinated with the nude figure. Outerbridge used his color prints to study the female nude.
In 1943 Outerbridge moved to Hollywood and eventually Laguna Beach, CA. Two years later he married Lois Weir, a California fashion designer. On October 17, 1958 Outerbridge died of lung cancer.
The Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division maintains a small collection of six of Outerbridge’s platinotype prints. The National Gallery of Australia has a significant collection.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1923
maker
Outerbridge, Jr., Paul
ID Number
PG.006058
catalog number
6058
accession number
223759

Margaret Dale

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
n.d.
maker
Muray, Nickolas
ID Number
2013.0327.1569
catalog number
2013.0327.1569
accession number
2013.0327

City Shell

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
Date made
1944
1938
maker
Morgan, Barbara
ID Number
PG.69.217.16
accession number
288025
catalog number
69.217.16

Hillotype Color Daguerreotype

The Photographic History Collection at the National Museum of American History holds an extraordinary series of early color photographs: sixty-two color daguerreotype plates made by Rev. Levi L. Hill in the early 1850s in Westkill, Greene County, New York.
Description (Brief)
The Photographic History Collection at the National Museum of American History holds an extraordinary series of early color photographs: sixty-two color daguerreotype plates made by Rev. Levi L. Hill in the early 1850s in Westkill, Greene County, New York. This is the world's largest collection of Heliochromy, a rare early color photographic process based on silver chloride.
Hill's color process was extremely complex, consisting of coating a daguerreotype plate with multiple layers of a compound of different metals that reacted to the different colors in the spectrum. The achievement of inventing a color photographic process in 1850 was even more remarkable considering that Hill was not trained as a scientist and lived in a very remote area of New York State.
Yet Hill was undisputably an important figure in the early history of American photography, an entrepreneur and an enthusiastic innovator. He wrote the first, and one of the best, manuals on daguerreotypy, "A Treatise on Daguerreotype" in 1850; and in 1856 he wrote the first manual on color photography, "Treatise on Heliochromy", which includes a description of his experiments and an overview of all the means of chemically producing pictures in natural colors with light.
Among pieces of importance by Hill are many daguerreotype photographs of illustrations such as this image of the leaves of a plant.
Location
Currently not on view
Date made
ca 1850s-1860s
maker
Hill, Levi
ID Number
PG.003999.60
accession number
125759
catalog number
3999.60

Outdoor Concert

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
maker
Falk, Sam
ID Number
PG.69.99.025
catalog number
69.99.025
accession number
281224

Astor House & St. Paul's Church from Park Row

ID Number
2012.3033.4098
catalog number
2012.3033.4098

Canopy over Pilgrim Rock

bare dirt in foreground; square carved monument with four arches, open in center; hill rising in background with small houseCurrently not on view
Description (Brief)
bare dirt in foreground; square carved monument with four arches, open in center; hill rising in background with small house
Location
Currently not on view
date made
late 1800s
maker
Kilburn Brothers
ID Number
2012.3033.0247
nonaccession number
2012.3033
catalog number
2012.3033.0247

Office window for Harris Koppelman, Lawyer

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
maker
Falk, Sam
ID Number
PG.69.99.002
accession number
281224
catalog number
69.99.002

Woodstock Festival, Bethel, NY 1969

With her camera, Lisa Law documented history in the heart of the counterculture revolution of the 1960s as she lived it, as a participant, an agent of change and a member of the broader culture.
Description
With her camera, Lisa Law documented history in the heart of the counterculture revolution of the 1960s as she lived it, as a participant, an agent of change and a member of the broader culture. She recorded this unconventional time of Anti-War demonstrations in California, communes, Love-Ins, peace marches and concerts, as well as her family life as she became a wife and mother. The photographs were collected by William Yeingst and Shannon Perich in a cross-unit collecting collaboration. Together they selected over two hundred photographs relevant to photographic history, cultural history, domestic life and social history.
Law’s portraiture and concert photographs include Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Lovin Spoonful and Peter, Paul and Mary. She also took several of Janis Joplin and her band Big Brother and the Holding Company, including the photograph used to create the poster included in the Smithsonian’s American Art Museum’s exhibition 1001 Days and Nights in American Art. Law and other members of the Hog Farm were involved in the logistics of setting up the well-known musical extravaganza, Woodstock. Her photographs include the teepee poles going into the hold of the plane, a few concert scenes and amenities like the kitchen and medical tent. Other photographs include peace rallies and concerts in Haight-Ashbury, Coretta Scott King speaking at an Anti-War protest and portraits of Allen Ginsburg and Timothy Leary. From her life in New Mexico the photographs include yoga sessions with Yogi Bhajan, bus races, parades and other public events. From life on the New Buffalo Commune, there are many pictures of her family and friends taken during meal preparation and eating, farming, building, playing, giving birth and caring for children.
Ms. Law did not realize how important her photographs were while she was taking them. It was not until after she divorced her husband, left the farm for Santa Fe and began a career as a photographer that she realized the depth of history she recorded. Today, she spends her time writing books, showing her photographs in museums all over the United States and making documentaries. In 1990, her video documentary, “Flashing on the Sixties,” won several awards.
A selection of photographs was featured in the exhibition A Visual Journey: Photographs by Lisa Law, 1964–1971, at the National Museum of American History October 1998-April 1999.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1969-08-16
date printed
1998
maker
Law, Lisa
ID Number
1998.0139.161
catalog number
1998.0139.161
accession number
1998.0139

Kodak Beau Brownie

date made
1930-1933
maker
Eastman Kodak Company
ID Number
2005.0220.07
accession number
2005.0220
catalog number
2005.0220.07

Ferenc Molnar

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1920s-1930s
maker
Muray, Nickolas
ID Number
2013.0327.1345
catalog number
2013.0327.1345
accession number
2013.0327

Jacob Heymann's Butcher Shop Window

Unmounted silver print by Berenice Abbott, "Jacob Heymann's Butcher Shop Window." Storefront is covered with signs advertising different kinds of meat including turkey, geese, lamb and duck. Sample prices range from 20 cents/lb for "fancy geese" to 22 cents/lb for a leg of lamb.
Description
Unmounted silver print by Berenice Abbott, "Jacob Heymann's Butcher Shop Window." Storefront is covered with signs advertising different kinds of meat including turkey, geese, lamb and duck. Sample prices range from 20 cents/lb for "fancy geese" to 22 cents/lb for a leg of lamb. Even the door in right of photograph has writing on it, as well as a sign, so that there is very little space on the front of the building that is not used for advertising. There is also a hanging light in the top right corner. Awning in top of photograph reads "Specials Daily - Meats - Jacob Hymann - Poultry," with the street number "345" on wooden sign in top right. Grate in sidewalk to left of door. Sidewalk only visible right bottom. Verso: Stamp, "Photograph, Berenice Abbott, Maine 04406; " Recto: signed by the artist.
Location
Currently not on view
Date made
1930-1940
maker
Abbott, Berenice
ID Number
PG.69.216.13
accession number
288852
catalog number
69.216.13

South Street on New York City's waterfront

After joining the photographic unit of the Resettlement Administration in 1935, Carl Mydans was sent to document the living conditions of ordinary Americans in their urban settings.
Description
After joining the photographic unit of the Resettlement Administration in 1935, Carl Mydans was sent to document the living conditions of ordinary Americans in their urban settings. In New York City, housing shortages and the lack of relief aid offered to the unemployed during the Great Depression led homeless people to seek refuge among the rubble of the city. During the cold winter, four men huddled around a makeshift fire on the side of the street to warm themselves.
Location
Currently not on view
Date made
Winter 1935
photographer
Mydans, Carl
ID Number
2005.0228.001
accession number
2005.0228
catalog number
2005.0228.001

Behind stage of Woodstock during a rainstorm. Bethel, NY 1969

With her camera, Lisa Law documented history in the heart of the counterculture revolution of the 1960s as she lived it, as a participant, an agent of change and a member of the broader culture.
Description
With her camera, Lisa Law documented history in the heart of the counterculture revolution of the 1960s as she lived it, as a participant, an agent of change and a member of the broader culture. She recorded this unconventional time of Anti-War demonstrations in California, communes, Love-Ins, peace marches and concerts, as well as her family life as she became a wife and mother. The photographs were collected by William Yeingst and Shannon Perich in a cross-unit collecting collaboration. Together they selected over two hundred photographs relevant to photographic history, cultural history, domestic life and social history.
Law’s portraiture and concert photographs include Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Lovin Spoonful and Peter, Paul and Mary. She also took several of Janis Joplin and her band Big Brother and the Holding Company, including the photograph used to create the poster included in the Smithsonian’s American Art Museum’s exhibition 1001 Days and Nights in American Art. Law and other members of the Hog Farm were involved in the logistics of setting up the well-known musical extravaganza, Woodstock. Her photographs include the teepee poles going into the hold of the plane, a few concert scenes and amenities like the kitchen and medical tent. Other photographs include peace rallies and concerts in Haight-Ashbury, Coretta Scott King speaking at an Anti-War protest and portraits of Allen Ginsburg and Timothy Leary. From her life in New Mexico the photographs include yoga sessions with Yogi Bhajan, bus races, parades and other public events. From life on the New Buffalo Commune, there are many pictures of her family and friends taken during meal preparation and eating, farming, building, playing, giving birth and caring for children.
Ms. Law did not realize how important her photographs were while she was taking them. It was not until after she divorced her husband, left the farm for Santa Fe and began a career as a photographer that she realized the depth of history she recorded. Today, she spends her time writing books, showing her photographs in museums all over the United States and making documentaries. In 1990, her video documentary, “Flashing on the Sixties,” won several awards.
A selection of photographs was featured in the exhibition A Visual Journey: Photographs by Lisa Law, 1964–1971, at the National Museum of American History October 1998-April 1999.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1969
date printed
1998
maker
Law, Lisa
ID Number
1998.0139.160
catalog number
1998.0139.160
accession number
1998.0139

Auto-Graflex Camera in Underwater Housing

This underwater camera housing holds an Auto-Graflex 4x5” camera body. It was first used by W.H. Longley of Goucher College in 1918.
Description
This underwater camera housing holds an Auto-Graflex 4x5” camera body. It was first used by W.H. Longley of Goucher College in 1918. Longley later teamed with Charles Martin of the National Geographic Society to take the first underwater color autochrome photographs with this outfit. The team exploded a pound of flash powder, floated on three pontoons, and used a reflector to take pictures off Dry Tortugas, Florida. A selection of the photographs and the story were published in National Geographic Magazine in January 1927.
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.
date made
1918
maker
Eastman Kodak Company. Folmer & Schwing Division
ID Number
PG.004199A
catalog number
4199A
accession number
157518

Wedding of Mr. and Mrs. William Munoz, City Hall, New York City

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1961-06
maker
Avedon, Richard
ID Number
PG.66.64.097A
accession number
264003
catalog number
66.64

American Pictorial Photography: Series 2

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1901
ID Number
PG.004668
catalog number
4668
accession number
187180

Sidney Coe Howard

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
n.d.
maker
Muray, Nickolas
ID Number
2013.0327.1567
catalog number
2013.0327.1567
accession number
2013.0327

Ansco Autoset 35mm Camera

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
maker
Ansco
ID Number
PG.006674
accession number
244554
catalog number
6674

Brooklyn Pier

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1955
maker
Falk, Sam
ID Number
PG.69.99.022
accession number
281224
catalog number
69.99.022

Woman waving out a window

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1960
maker
Harbutt, Charles
ID Number
PG.72.14.068

broken windows of a building

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1960
maker
Harbutt, Charles
ID Number
PG.72.14.065

Waterlilies, Hudson Valley, NY

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
2000
maker
Weingarten, Robert I.
ID Number
2017.0338.0010
accession number
2017.0338
catalog number
2017.0338.0010

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