<p>The Carl Mydans Collection at the National Museum of American History consists of 166 photographs that span the years from the mid-1930s to the late 1960s, and two Halliburton camera cases that contain all his photographic equipment. <br></p> <p>For additional images, search collections.si.edu.</p> <p>Keywords: photojournalist, photojournalism, war photography, documentary photography, visual culture, picture magazines, current events, reportage, crisis photography, war coverage, Farm Security Administration, FSA, World War Two, World War II, WWII, Korean War, Life Magazine, U.S. Camera, Time Magazine</p> <p>Text from PHC finding aid written by Vanessa Pares:</p> <p>The photographs in the Photographic History Collection include the rural images created as part of his work for the Farm Security Administration and those taken while on assignment for <em>LIFE</em> magazine. In the mid-1930s, he covered cattle drives in the Big Bend, the oil boomtown of Freer and “brushhogs,” migratory workers who lived by the side of the road. A few years later, he completed the series on “sandhogs,” construction workers who built the Midtown Tunnel under the East River in New York City. </p> <p>During the 1940s, he recorded events of the Second World War, mainly in the Pacific theater. Once the war ended, he was sent to Bikini Island Atoll, an island chain in the Pacific that is part of the Marshall Islands chain. There he documented the evacuation of the people of Bikini from their home island in order to clear the way for major atomic testing, and the Bikinians' exodus to nearby Rongerik.</p> <p>The rest of the collection includes portraits of major political, military, and literary figures, such as Winston Churchill, General MacArthur and William Faulkner. Carl Mydans was a storyteller. Always seeking the drama and history of a moment, his pictures are meant to recount a story with no words. Carl Mydans was born in Boston on May 20, 1907. He graduated from Boston University with a degree in journalism, after which he went on to work as a free-lance writer for the <em>Boston Herald</em> and the <em>Boston Globe</em>. While a staff writer for the <em>American Banker</em>, Mydans began to carry a miniature camera on his assignments.</p> <p>In 1935, he carried a camera full time, joining the photographic unit of the Resettlement Administration, which merged into the Farm Security Administration in 1937. Under the supervision of Roy Stryker, a group of photographers—composed of Dorothea Lange, Walker Evens, Ben Shahn, Arthur Rothstein and Carl Mydans, among others—was sent on assignment to make a difference by reporting and documenting the plight of the poor farmer. Their task was to create a “pictorial history” of agriculture and focus on those most affected by the Great Depression. The photographers would tour the nation and interpret it through the shape of the land and the faces of the unemployed, the migrant farmers, and the sharecroppers. During this time, Mydans documented cotton production in the southeastern states, the impoverished dwellings of New England, and the creation of new “greenbelt towns” or government-sponsored planned communities. </p> <p>In 1936, Mydans left the FSA and was hired by the newly established <em>LIFE</em> magazine. One of his first assignments for <em>LIFE</em> was a photo essay on Texas, focusing mainly on the oil boomtown of Freer. It was also at this time that he met Shelley Smith, a <em>LIFE</em> researcher and journalist whom he married the following year. Once World War II broke out, the couple was sent to Europe as a reporter-photographer team. At first they went to England, covering London under siege, then to Sweden, and then to Finland, where Mydans had his first combat experience. The couple later traveled to Italy to cover Fascism, to France to witness its defeat, to Pearl Harbor to photograph American naval operations, and then to China. When the attack on Pearl Harbor occured, Carl and his wife were in Manila, the Philippines. Early in 1942, the Philippines were invaded by the Japanese and the couple was imprisoned. After almost nine months of captivity, they were moved from Santo Tomas University—an internment camp for civilians—to Shanghai. On December 1943, the couple, along with 1,400 American and Canadian citizens, was repatriated. Although Mydans was unable to cover the war, he was grateful to have survived and continue to watch and photograph all the events that encompassed his life. Soon after his return to the States, he was sent back to the European front. </p> <p>In 1944, he accompanied Allied forces to Italy where he covered the campaigns in Monte Cassino and Rome. After Italy, Mydans traveled to Marseilles to cover the fighting in southern France. Following the liberation of France, he was rushed back to the South Pacific to rejoin Gen. Douglas MacArthur for his triumphant return to the Philippines. Three weeks after the invasion of Luzon, Mydans took part in the charge into Manila—which concluded with the liberation of the remaining 4,000 civilian captives in Santo Tomas—alongside the 8th Cavalry Regiment. Months later, on September 2, 1945, Mydans was one of the few privileged photojournalists to be present at the site of the official Japanese surrender on the <em>U.S.S. Missouri</em>. After the Second World War, the Mydans took up residence in Tokyo, where he worked as chief editor of the TIME-LIFE news bureau. During those years, he captured the earthquake at Fukui, the Communist Revolution in China, and the war in Korea. </p> <p>In 1950, while on a trip to New York, Mydans received word of the outbreak of the Korean war. It only took him ten days to get himself shipped back into battle. Later that year, he received a Gold Achievement Award from <em>U.S. Camera</em> for his coverage of the Korean conflict. After the war, Mydans completed assignments in England, Berlin, and Russia, and traveled to Vietnam in 1968 to do a story on refugees. After the closing of <em>LIFE</em>, he continued to work as a photojournalist with <em>TIME</em> magazine, and wrote books based on his experiences at war. Mydans died on August 16, 2004.</p>

<p>Murray Becker was one of the key photographers of the Hindenburg disaster, the crash of a Nazi dirigible at Lakehurst, NJ on May 6, 1937. The Murray Becker collection consists predominantly of sixteen silver gelatin prints of the Hindenburg disaster. It also includes an oversized scrapbook of newspaper articles and photos covering the disaster, as well as a well-known photograph of a teary-eyed Lou Gehrig announcing his retirement from baseball.<br></p> <p>Keywords:  Hindenburg disaster, Associated Press, AP, Lou Gehrig, photojournalism, dirigible, flight disaster, photojournalism, media history, iconic photographs, scrapbooking</p> <p>On May 6, 1937 Becker and a score of other photographers, including Sam Shere of the International News Photo (INP) and Charles Hoff of the New York Daily News, appeared for a routine night landing of the Hindenburg. As the dirigible pulled in, lines were dropped from the aircraft so that it could be safely reined in to the ground below. Without warning, an explosion was heard, and the entire aircraft was consumed by flame in about 47 seconds. During those 47 seconds, when other photographers present shot one photograph at the most, Murray Becker quickly took three slides using his 4x5 Speed Graphic camera. The following day pictures of the event were reproduced in thousands of newspapers around the globe.</p> <p>The photographs of the Hindenburg exploding affected newspaper readers in a way that words could not. After those photographs were reproduced across the United States and around the world, many newspaper stories were not considered credible unless they had images to support the stories. Becker went on to produce a photograph of Lou Gehrig announcing his retirement in 1939 for which he also received awards. Becker served as Chief Photographer of the Associated Press for a full thirty-two years before he retired.</p> <p><br></p> <p><br></p>

<p>This is a sampling of tintypes and cameras used to make tintypes from the Photographic History Collection. <br></p> <p>This sampling includes works by contemporary photographer Ed Drew, of Native Americans and military personnel. These works are copyrighted by Ed Drew.  </p> <p>This sampling includes tintypes that are cased and uncased, in paper mats, in album pages, in frames, and often just the tintype plate itself. Some are lightly colored and others heavily painted.</p> <p>Keywords: tintype, ferrotype, melaniotype, occupational portrait, portrait photography, studio photography, exterior portrait</p> <p>Note: For additional images search collections.si.edu. The Scovil Company, held by the Division of Work & Industry, holds a particularly interesting group of pins and buttons with photography of Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, and others who ran for office. The Military History Collection also holds tintypes of soldiers and other military related themes.</p> <h2>Tintypes</h2> <p>The NMAH Photographic History Collection (PHC) has over 3000 tintype photographs dating from the beginnings of the process in 1856 to the present. ‘Tintype’ was coined and became the favored name.</p> <p>Tintypes in the PHC are found in albums, the Kaynor Union Case collection, and as individual photographs. The original tintype process patent was assigned to William and Peter Neff in 1856. William Neff died a short time later, but his son Peter, who named the process Melainotype, continued on with his work. The earliest tintypes in the PHC are a group of more than thirty Peter Neff Melainotypes, some of which date back to 1856 and contain notes written by Peter Neff. Shortly after the Melainotype, Victor Griswold introduced a very similar process on thinner, lighter iron plates and called them Ferrotypes. The PHC has tintypes ranging from rare large images between 5”x7” and 10”x12”down to small images cut to 6mm diameter to fit jewelry. The Melainotypes are between 1/6 plate and 4”x5” in size and many have indistinct images. There are also unexposed Melainotype plates including a pack of 1/6 plates and large whole-plates with four decorated oval borders that were designed to be cut into smaller quarter plates after exposure.</p> <p>The great majority of tintype photographs are studio portraits, including the very popular ‘Gem’ size (about ¾” x 1”). Almost every gem tintype in the PHC is an individual head and shoulders portraits, the only exceptions seen being a full length portrait and a head and shoulders portrait of a couple. Most of these gem portraits are in small gem albums designed to hold two to six gems per page. However, several gems are mounted on cartes-de-visite (CDV) size cards and set in specifically designed album pages. Some of these CDV mounted gems are in elaborate miniature frames attached to the card. The tintypes larger than gem size show a greater variety of subject matter, but still with a main focus on individual portraits, this is especially true of the smaller 1/16 and 1/9 plate images. The most common outdoor subjects noted are people standing in front of their homes and photographs of people proudly standing with, or sitting on, their horse or horses and buggy. One of the largest tintypes is a 9”x 7” outdoor view of a row of townhouses with a couple standing on one of the balconies. There is also an outdoor tintype of men fishing along with another of their days catch.</p> <p>One common subject in tintype photography, as noted in textbooks, is the civil war soldier. The durability of the tintype meant that photographs taken in the field could be sent home. However, this category of tintype is not well represented in the PHC, with less than thirty noted due to the fact that the majority of the Smithsonian’s Civil War tintypes are located mainly in the Military History Collection. Most of the PHC examples of Civil War tintypes are in the Kaynor collection of cased images.</p> <p>Some of the tintypes in the PHC are hand-colored. This coloring varies from light tinting of faces and hands to heavy overpainting that obscures the underlying tintype image. A number of tintypes, occupational views, depict people with the apparatus of their occupations. Some are posed studio shots and others appear to be photographs of people at their place of work. Among the occupational views are images of milk maids, doctor, grocery delivery man, weavers, fireman, ice delivery man, craftsman, cobbler, shoe shiners, mail carrier, surveyor, pipe liners, and other tintypes of people wearing work clothes and posing with tools. </p> <p><br></p>

<p>This collection is a sampling of photographs from the Photographic History Collection of circuses, circus performers, carnivals, the midway, circus animals, carnival workers and games.<br></p> <p>Sally Bordwell photographed the carnival in 1970s and Dawn Rogala photographed traveling circuses in the 1990s. </p> <p>See collections.si.edu for additional images.</p> <p>The Circus Collection includes the Photographic History Collection’s object holdings related to the history of circus from the end of the nineteenth to the turn of the twenty-first century. For the purpose of this finding aid, circus is defined as any activity relating to the staging and viewing of circus, sideshow, or “freak show” performances. The collection is primarily composed of thirty cabinet print and thirteen carte-de-visite photographs of performers in circus “freak shows.” Some of these prints are marked with the identities of the individuals depicted, including Chang and Eng, Siamese twins employed by the Barnum & Bailey circus and Tom Thumb, a famous performer with dwarfism. In a number of the photographs, the people who performed for the circus are accompanied by their families, or “normal” individuals to emphasize the distinctiveness of the performer. The collection also includes a photo album with twenty-three photographs of circus performers. These pictures show “freak show” performers, acrobats, and other individuals who may have performed in circus shows.</p> <p>The collection also includes several books. In the handmade book, <em>Record of an Idle Summer</em>, Florence Albrecht details her summer activities and shares reflections on her time on the Jersey Shore in 1906. In the chapter “May,” the author describes the circus coming to town, including several photographs of circus tents, elephants, and a parade down the main street of the town. P.T. Barnum’s autobiography Struggles and Triumphs also exists in the Photographic History Collection. In the book, Barnum recounts his life’s endeavors, including his New York American Museum and eponymous circus. While there are no photographs in the book, there are a number of illustrations, including a portrait of P.T. Barnum based on G. K. Warren’s photograph, pictures of his museum and various aspects of his traveling show. There is a collection of gelatin silver photographs made in 1972 by Lesley Sussmann and Sally Bordwell documenting carnivals across the American South.</p>

<p>The Berenice Abbot collection at NMAH Photographic History consists of 16 silver prints ranging in size from 7 1/2” x 9 1/4” to 18 3/4” x 15,” and also includes two tall, narrow prints of Manhattan and a swinging pendulum. The photographs provide a broad survey of the work Abbott produced during her lifetime, from her early portraiture work in Paris and her “Changing New York” series to the “Physics” and “Route 1, U.S.A.” series.’<br></p> <p>Keywords:  women photographer, documentary photography, New York City, street photography, science and photography, portraiture</p> <p>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 <em>Changing New York</em>, 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.</p>

<p>This is a collection of photographs from the Photographic History Collection of work by Eugene Atget. The portrait of Atget is by Bernice Abbot. <br></p> <p>The Eugène Atget collection consists of fourteen silver albumen prints made between 1907 and 1908. On the back of each print the title and dates are handwritten by the artist. On a few, a number is etched in the negative. All of the photographs present different scenes in Paris, France. Most are architectural in subject matter, but some do include individuals. Each print is approximately 7 x 8.5 inches and is not mounted.</p> <p>Keywords: albumen, French architecture, street views, store windows, Paris, France, portrait, windows</p> <p><br></p> <p>Edited text from finding aid:</p> <p>Le Pére Atget, as Man Ray fondly called him, was born in Libourne, France in 1857. As a young man, he was drawn not to photography, but to the stage. Although he was drafted into the army in 1878 and remained on active duty for several years, Atget began studying at the National Conservatory of Music and Drama in 1879. By 1881, his teachers decided he could not handle the joint responsibilities of acting and military duty, and did not ask him to return the following year. Despite his dismissal, Atget went on to perform in small productions for the next ten years. By the time he was forty, he realized he was not going to succeed as an actor. After an initial attempt at painting and a few years of photographic experimentation, Atget finally settled into a Parisian apartment on Rue Campagne Premiere between 1890 and 1891 and hung a small painted sign above his door that defined his work for generations: “Documents pour artistes.”<br><br>While Atget is considered to be one of the great early photographers, his work was by no means considered groundbreaking at the time. The first push to document historical architecture in France, and especially Paris, began in the 1850s when the Commission des Monuments Historique was formed to photograph the city. Among the photographers appointed by the commission were Henri Le Secq, who photographed Chartes Cathedral and Reims, Edouard Baldus, and Charles Nègre (COLL.PHOTOS.000054). Atget began his work during a second push around the turn of the century, and was facilitated by technological advances in the mid-1890s that made photography easier for professionals and amateurs. What distinguished Atget from his contemporaries was his decision not to work for an institution where his photographs would be on public record. Rather, he carved his own niche in the market as a freelance photographer.</p> <p>As a result, in addition to any commissions he received from clients, Atget had the opportunity to seek out subjects that were of personal and professional interest, such as the trees that figure so frequently in collections of his work. Between 1898 and 1927, Atget systematically photographed streets, monuments, historic buildings and dwellings both in Paris and in the outlying areas. His meticulously categorized work was arranged in albums, and he recorded in detail his client’s preferences for different subjects so that he would be prepared when he met with them. To his credit, Atget’s body of work remains perhaps the best pictorial record available of Paris in the first quarter of the twentieth century.<br><br>By 1920 when most photographers had switched to smaller and technically superior cameras, Atget continued to use the same 18 x24 view camera he had been using since 1888. Professionally, he was isolated as he did not enjoy the company of a group of peers with whom he could discuss his work. The first publication of his photographs was in “La Revolution Surrealiste” in 1925. Though Atget had been well-known in his business since 1901, this was the first time his work had been identified as artistic rather than merely documentary. Atget himself refused to have his name included in the magazine, and by implication in the movement, explaining that he was simply a purveyor of documents that could be used by other artists. While his work belies this statement, he continued to disassociate himself from Surrealism until his death in 1927.<br><br>Both a businessman and artist, Atget sold his work to artists, historians, and even institutions such as the Bibliotheque Nationale during his lifetime. In 1920 the Service Photographique des Monuments Historiques purchased just over 2600 of Atget’s negatives. The remainder of the negatives, as well as any prints that remained following his death, went to his good friend Andre Calmette. Shortly thereafter, Berenice Abbott (COLL.PHOTOS.000017), a young American photographer, persuaded Calmette to sell her the collection so that she could properly introduce it to the world. She and American photographer Walker Evans (COLL.PHOTOS.000024) are testaments to the style and rigor that characterized Atget’s work, and both followed his tradition of documenting the urban landscape and its details.</p>

<p>The Lisa Law collection at the NMAH Photographic History Department consists of 202 silver gelatin photographs.<br></p> <p>Copyright Lisa Law</p> <p>Keywords: 1960s, counter culture movement, Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, The Beatles, Lovin Spoonful, Peter, Paul and Mary, Woodstock, Haight-Ashbury, Coretta Scott King, Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, Yogi Bhajan, New Buffalo Commune, hippies, music and photography, Vietnam protests, farming, back to the land movement, communal living, yoga, spirituality, cooking, motherhood</p> <p>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 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. </p> <p>The photographs were collected by William Yeingst and Shannon Perich in a cross-unit collecting collaboration.  A selection of the photographs were featured in the exhibition <em>A Visual Journey: Photographs by Lisa Law, 1964–1971</em>, at the National Museum of American History, October 1998-April 1999. Together, the curators 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 <em>1001 Days and Nights in American Art</em>. </p> <p>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 Ginsberg 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. After Law left the farm, she began a career as a photographer.  In 1990, her video documentary, “Flashing on the Sixties,” won several awards.</p>

<p>The Imogen Cunningham collection consists of thirty gelatin silver photographs, mounted, with label, signed and dated by the photographer, and three platinum prints, mounted and labeled. The subjects in the thirty gelatin silver photographs range from plants to portraiture between 1925 and 1968. The three platinum prints were made in 1912 and are representative of Cunningham’s pictorialist style. They were acquired from the photographer in 1968.<br><br>Keywords: art photography, women photographers, self-portrait, portraits of photographers, Edward Weston, Alfred Stieglitz<br><br>For additional collections, search collections.si.edu.<br><br>The photographs were used in a Smithsonian exhibition titled, “Women, Cameras, and Images I,” November 30, 1968-May 30, 1969, in the Hall of Photography, Museum of History and Technology. The exhibition also included thirty additional photographs lent by Imogen Cunningham, and five lent from the Library of Congress. The “Women, Cameras, and Images” exhibition was a series of five exhibitions featuring the work of female photographers: Cunningham, Betty Hahn, Gayle Smalley, Barbara Morgan, and Janine Niepce.</p>

<p>The Annie Appel collection at the NMAH Photographic History Collection consists of forty-two gelatin silver portraits of people who attended various Occupy protests. <br></p> <p>Copyright Anne Appel</p>

<p>The Nickolas Muray collection at the NMAH Photographic History Department includes  six bromide and forty-six color-carbro photographs. They range in subject from commercial photography to portraits of famous individuals spanning from the 1920s through the early 1960s.<br></p> <p> Additional photographs by Muray can be found in the Learning Lab collection containing stills of Hollywood movie stars.<br></p> <p>For additional collections, search collections.si.edu.</p> <p>Keywords: advertising photography, dance photography, performance photography, magazine work, color carbro photography, color photography, platinum photography, dancers, dance photography, food photography</p>

<p>This is an assortment of photographs, ephemera and camera equipment from the Photographic History Collection created and used by photojournalist Roy Joseph Zalesky. Photographs date from the 1980s and 1990s and mostly depict Wilmington, North Carolina, and Charlotte, North Carolina.<br></p> <p>For additional images, search collections.si.edu.</p> <p>Keywords: photojournalism, photojournalist, reportage, gelatin silver prints, documentary photography, street photography, store front windows, downtown, city life, agricultural worker, farmer, shopping, cafe, dinner, eating</p> <p><br></p>

<p>This collection of photographs was the first purchase of art photography for what is now the Photographic History Collection.<br></p> <p>Keywords: Smithsonian history, art photography, pictorialism, pictorialist, Thomas Smillie, exhibition history</p> <p>Three prestigious Washington, D.C., organizations played a major role in the establishment and acceptance of art photography in America. The Camera Club of the Capital Bicycle Club sponsored the 1896 Washington Salon and Art Photographic Exhibition. The Cosmos Club provided the exhibit space. And fifty of the salon's images were purchased to expand the Smithsonian Institution's national collection.</p> <p>The online exhibition that explores this exhibition further can be found at <a href="https://americanhistory.si.edu/1896/index.htm" style="background-color:rgb(63,63,63);">https://americanhistory.si.edu/1896/index.htm</a>.</p> <p></p>