Photography - Overview
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.
"Photography - Overview" showing 1242 items.
Page 1 of 125
Muybridge Patent Model
- Description
- A pioneer in the development of the photography of motion, 19th-century photographer Eadweard Muybridge worked to photograph humans or animals in motion. Muybridge's patent for the Method and Apparatus for Photographing Objects in Motion (No. 212, 865, Patented March 4, 1879) documented Muybridge's sliding-shutter mechanism and background panel used to photograph a horse in rapid motion "in order to determine the posture, position, and relation of their limbs in different proportions of their step or stride." The patent model is built in two different scales, showing the camera slides at one side and the track/grid background concept (with heavy thread trip cord) on the other. The horse would travel between them.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1879
- maker
- Muybridge, Eadweard
- ID Number
- PG*0754
- catalog number
- 754
- accession number
- 48866
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Family Photo Album
- Description
- Family photograph albums hold the history of generations, preserving the memories of birthdays, holidays, travels, and all general aspects of life. African American Mary Taylor used her 35mm Bell and Howell camera to document her family's life in the black community of Los Angeles, California, during the mid-20th century. She turned a discarded wallpaper sample book into a treasured family heirloom.
- Taylor's family photographs including 19th-century tintypes, turn-of-the-century hand-colored portraits, and albums from the 1950s to the 1970s provide insight into the African American experience in the United States over the past century.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- ca 1960
- maker
- Taylor, Mary A.
- ID Number
- 2002.0103.02
- accession number
- 2002.0103
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Construction engineer Maurice J. Shannon looks for a job on Sunset Boulevard
- Description
- Just a few months before World War II broke out, Mydans was in California. A decade of economic crises had men like 54-year-old engineer Maurice J. Shannon searching for jobs wherever they could find them. Although the economy was recovering to the levels of the late 1920s, unemployment maintained a high, steady number throughout the following decade.
- Despite California's effort in the 1930s to create jobs and stabilize the state's economy by building massive structures-- such as the Hoover Dam, the Coit Tower and the Golden Gate Bridge-- people were still faced hardships.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1939-07
- 1939
- photographer
- Mydans, Carl
- ID Number
- 2005.0228.055
- accession number
- 2005.0228
- catalog number
- 2005.0228.055
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Young Japanese man strumming a guitar inside the Tule Lake Segregation Center
- Description
- After their capture in Manila by Japanese forces in January 1942 and 16 months in internment camps, Carl and Shelly Mydans finally touched American soil in late 1943. Mydans' first assignment for LIFE magazine after his repatriation was a story on Japanese internment camps on the U.S. West Coast.
- Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, U.S. citizens of Japanese ancestry living in the United States were removed from their homes and relocated to isolated inland areas in California and other western states. This man was one of 155 "pressure boys," men loyal to Japan who had been involved in various riots in November the previous year. Mydans reported that the boy was singing Home on the Range as he entered the barracks. "He sang it like an American. There was no Japanese accent. He looked at me the same way I guess I looked at a Japanese official when he came to check on me at Camp Santo Tomás in Manila. At the back of my mind was the thought, 'Come on, get it over and get out. Leave me alone.' This boy felt the same way. He was just waiting, killing time" (LIFE, March 20, 1944, p.31).
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1944
- photographer
- Mydans, Carl
- ID Number
- 2005.0228.065
- accession number
- 2005.0228
- catalog number
- 2005.0228.065
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Khrushchev visits Hollywood
- Description
- In 1959 Mydans photographed Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev on his visit to the United States. During his stay, Khrushchev visited the Twentieth Century Fox studios during the filming of the movie Can-Can. Khrushchev came on the set with his wife, bodyguards, politicians, U.S. officials, and studio heads who ordered the dancers to perform an entire can-can number for the elite guests.
- The film, starring Shirley MacLaine, received worldwide publicity because of Khrushchev's visit. The next day's newspapers carried an interesting quote from him. When asked what he thought of Can-Can, he replied, "The face of humanity is prettier than its backside."
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1959
- photographer
- Mydans, Carl
- ID Number
- 2005.0228.154
- accession number
- 2005.0228
- catalog number
- 2005.0228.154
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Framed Photograph of an Orange Grove
- Description (Brief)
- This photograph of an orange grove is one of forty-nine framed black and white photographic prints bequeathed to the Smithsonian by William F. Bucher of Washington, D.C. Bucher, a cabinetmaker, framed each photograph in wood of the same species as the tree depicted in the print. The photos were displayed in a special exhibition, Our Trees and their Woods at the United States National Museum in 1931.
- The tree depicted in this photograph was located in Florida and the image was made by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The frame is made of quarter-inch Florida orange wood on chestnut, with a back bead of rosewood and a glass bead of African padauk.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1928
- frame maker
- Bucher, William F.
- photographer
- U.S. Department of Agriculture
- ID Number
- AG*115767.06
- catalog number
- AG*115767.06
- accession number
- 115767
- maker number
- 6
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Technicolor Camera
- Description
- In "The Wizard of Oz", Dorothy's journey from Kansas to Oz is symbolized by a shift from black and white to Technicolor. This camera was one of several used to film the Oz scenes.
- Invented in 1932, the Technicolor camera recorded on three separate negatives--red, blue, and green--which were then combined to develop a full-color positive print. The box encasing the camera, a "blimp," muffled the machine's sound during filming.
- date made
- 1937
- maker
- Technicolor Corporation
- ID Number
- PG*8166
- catalog number
- 8166
- maker number
- Patent No: 2,000,058
- accession number
- 260112
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
"Migrant Mother," by Dorothea Lange
- Description
- During the Great Depression, government photographer Dorothea Lange took this picture at a migrant farmworkers' camp near Nipomo, California. Lange's brief caption recorded her impressions of the family's plight: "Destitute pea pickers ... a 32-year-old mother of seven children."
- First published in a San Francisco newspaper, this poignant image became one of the most famous photographs of the Depression era, emblematic of the hardships suffered by poor migrant families. The "migrant mother," anonymous for many years, was later identified as Oklahoma native Florence Thompson.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1936
- maker
- Lange, Dorothea
- ID Number
- 1983.0069.07
- accession number
- 1983.0069
- catalog number
- 83.69.7
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Ricky Skaggs
- Description
- Henry Horenstein photographed Ricky Skaggs (b. 1954) several times as a member of Emmylou Harris's Hot Band and as a memeber of J. D. Crowe & the New South. A multi-talented singer and instrumentalist, Ricky Skaggs's success helped inspire the new traditionalist movement, and was largely responsible for a back-to-basics movement in country music.
- negative
- 1980
- 2003
- maker
- Horenstein, Henry
- ID Number
- 2003.0169.020
- accession number
- 2003.0169
- catalog number
- 2003.0169.020
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
EmmyLou Harris
- Description
- Working on assignment, Henry Horenstein photographed EmmyLou Harris (b. 1947) at her home. In the 1970s, Harris represented the generation of musicians who were influenced by traditional country, rock, and folk music. Over the years, Harris has had a profound impact on contemporary popular and country music.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- negative
- 1980
- 2003
- maker
- Horenstein, Henry
- ID Number
- 2003.0169.034
- accession number
- 2003.0169
- catalog number
- 2003.0169.034
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
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