Photographic History Collection
notes: label: Description
content: The Photographic History Collection (PHC) is part of the Division of Information Technology & Communication. There are approximately 200,000 photographs in various formats representing the work of over 2000 photographers, and about 15,000 pieces of photographic apparatus. The collection is the oldest collection of photography in an American museum.
label: Description
content: The PHC collects for the art, science and technology of photography. As such, the collection is very broad. In addition to collecting fine art photographs, the collection includes mutoscope broadsides, stereographs, snapshots and albums, 3D photography, tintypes, daguerreotypes and space photography. The apparatus collection includes patent models; entire studios; aerial, panorama, and underwater cameras; still projectors (magic lantern and 35mm); early motion picture; detective and spy cameras; cameras used by Edweard Muybridge, Rudolf Eickemeyer, Jr., William Henry Fox Talbot and Edward Weston; three-color cameras; photo chemistry; film (glass, roll, and sheet); tripods; light bulbs; plate holders; and more.
label: Description
content: The collection was officially established as a Smithsonian unit in 1896, with the purchase of fifty photographs from the 1896 Washington Salon and Art Photographic Exhibition. However, collecting had begun previously when the Smithsonian compiled objects for an exhibit on the history of photography at the 1888 Ohio Centennial Exposition, lead by the Smithsonian's chief photographer Thomas Smillie. Taking on additional duties, Smillie began collecting such objects as SFB Morse's daguerreotype camera, and soliciting photographic papers, cameras and other materials from a variety of commercial, government and private entities. As a result of this initial collecting, and based on the experience of the curators who followed (all professional photographers, except the two present curators), the collection has a decidedly technological bent. There are many experimental and commercially unsuccessful processes represented in the collection. The collection of about 400 patent models from the US Patent Office, dating from 1840 to 1908 for example, provides an opportunity to explore the ways in which people were imagining photography and its possibilities.
label: Description
content: While the PHC contains photographs of many subjects, it should be noted that many of the other collections at the National Museum of American History and throughout the rest of the Smithsonian have photographs relating to their particular subject areas. In fact, Merry Foresta writes in her book <i>At First Sight: Photographs at the Smithsonian</i> that there are nearly 700 Smithsonian photography collections within its sixteen museums and research centers. However, PHC is the broadest and most encompassing of those collections.
label: Description
content: There are additional resources in the PHC that are not cataloged, including the Science Service collection, biographical files on photographers and those related to photography, an Archival Reference file which contains information and brochures on processes and products, and about 1200 patent papers selected from patents issued by the US Patent Office from the 1840s-1940s.
label: Description
content: In addition to containing individual works of art that can be appreciated on their own merit, the Photographic History Collection as a whole hopes to inspire learning about historic processes, studying the work of individual photographers, seeing the breadth of work covered within a specific genre, exploring technical and philosophical themes within the practice and history of photograph, gain appreciation for the commercial and experimental ventures of photograph through the apparatus collection, and learn more about the culture and environments in which photography exists.
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content: The collection is available for study by appointment. Contact either Associate Curator Shannon Perich, perichs@si.edu.
setName: label: See more items in
content: Work and Industry: Photographic History
label: See more items in
content: Photography
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: COLL.PHOTOS.000003
objectType: label: Object Name
content: photographic history collection
label: Object Name
content: Photographic History Collection