Photographer Archives

Professional photographers and photography firms offer a deep and wide range of work, often including original large-format negatives, transparencies, and digital files. These archives are shaped by the influence of the photographers’ clients and the interests of general customers as well as by their special skill in portraying building exteriors and interiors.

Photographer Archives include:

Fischer (Sigurd) Collection (1921-1966)
Gottscho-Schleisner Collection (1896-1970, bulk 1935-1955)
Hedrich-Blessing Photographs with signatures by architects who designed the buildings (1937-2000)
Highsmith (Carol M.) Archive (1980-)
Horydczak (Theodor) Photograph Collection (1915-1955, bulk ca. 1920-ca. 1950)
Johnston (Frances B.) Photograph Collection (1913-1940)
Korab (Balthazar) Photographic Archive (1950-2011, bulk 1970-2000)
Lincoln (Fay S.) Architectural Photographs (1915-1959)
McGrath (Norman) Photograph Collection (1960-)
Peyser and Patzig Architectural Photography of New York City (ca. 1900-ca. 1920)
Tebbs (Robert W.) Collection (1917-1942)
Trager (Philip) Photograph Archive (1968-2008)
Underhill Collection (first half of the 20th century)
Vergara (Camilo J.) Photograph Collection (from 1970s-)

Each collection is briefly described below. Primary links display fuller bibliographic information about the collection in the Prints and Photographs Online Catalog if available. Links are provided to digitized primary source content, finding aid and research guide for the collection, collection overview of the Collection, and background information page when available. The background information page includes more inks to the left side under "This Collection." Additional links to related secondary sources are provided below each collection description, followed by books, periodicals, dissertations & theses, articles & blogs, and webcasts related to each collection when available.

Fischer (Sigurd) Collection (1921-1966)

Fischer (Sigurd) Collection
View digitized content from the Fischer Collection
Approximately 18,000 negatives, primarily nitrate film negatives for about 1,200 projects (selections digitized) created between 1921 and 1966 by Sigurd Fischer (1887-1981), heavily representing office buildings, colleges and schools, and residences amongst others in New York City and 28 other states in the US.
[Image: LC-DIG-ppmsca-40134]

Related collections outside of LC (external link):

Sigurd Fischer architectural drawings and papers, 1906-1916, bulk 1909-1912 External (Columbia University Libraries Archival Collection)

Periodicals
Dissertations & Theses

The following title links to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog.

Buildings & Landscapes: Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum
Dolkart, Andrew S. “The Fabric of New York City's Garment District: Architecture and Development in an Urban Cultural Landscape.” Buildings & Landscapes: Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum, vol. 18, no. 1 (2011):14–42.

Dissertations and theses listed below are accessible via ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global (On-site access only). If you are searching at the Library of Congress or an institution which subscribes to the Database, clicking the hyperlink will bring you directly to the publication. Abstracts are retrieved from the Database when available.

Lehman, A.L. (1974). The New York Skyscraper: A History Of Its Development, 1870-1939
(ProQuest document ID: 302734990)
Betts, M. B. (1999). The *American architecture of joseph urban
(ProQuest document ID: 304510528)
Abstract: The Austrian-American architect and designer, Joseph Urban (1872–1933) helped to introduce and popularize European modern design in the United States during the early part of the twentieth century. Urban emigrated to the United States in 1911, after establishing a reputation as a designer in Europe. Imported European designers and theatrical troupes as well as exhibitions and periodicals displaying the latest European avant-garde set designs formed an early source of information for American designers during the 1910s and 1920s. Theater also provides a critical model for assessing Urban's visual forms and professional role. During the 1910s–1920s many European theatrical designers and directors made a radical visual shift from Expressionist to epic theater. While visually discontinuous, the shift evolved out of concerns with the audience, and the use of visual effects to engage or detach the viewer. This provides a better model for assessing the aims and impact of architects like Urban who shifted from Art Deco forms to an International Style vocabulary than the formalist and functionalist approach that has dismissed the work of such architects as inconsistent.
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Recent scholarship has suggested that modernism not only consisted of the machine aesthetic of cubism but the exotic decorations of painter Henri Matisse, the Russian ballet, and fashion designer Paul Poiret. Modern artists often began with the materials from their contemporary life and popular activities. The forms of urban vernacular culture provided inspiration for the content and the visual language of modern art. Modern designers during the 1910s and 1920s took this a step further by creating works for broad commercial cultures rather than elite markets.

Urban's involvement and promotion of European design in the 1900s and the United States during the 1910s, his use of the forms and subjects of urban commercial culture and work for commercial art industries identifies him as a key figure in the development and spread of modernism in the United States. Urban's transfer of his celebrity status from the theatrical to the architectural worlds profoundly influenced his own practice and the professional role and public perception of American architects.

Gottscho-Schleisner Collection (1896-1970, bulk 1935-1955)

Gottscho-Schleisner Collection
View digitized content from the Gottscho-Schleisner Collection
View background information and search the Gottscho-Schleisner Collection
Over 29,000 negatives (fully digitized) by Samuel Gottscho (1875-1971) and his firm Gottscho-Schleisner, Inc with William Schleisner (1912-1962) document important achievements in American twentieth-century architecture and interior design. These depict interiors and exteriors of homes, stores, offices, factories, historic buildings and other structures, primarily in the northeastern United States and Florida, as well as the 1939-1941 World’s Fair in New York. Work by Gottscho before the establishment of the firm includes views of New York City and the surrounding area.
[Image: LC-DIG-ppmsca-05849]

The following titles link to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog. Links to additional online content are included when available.

Annual flowers, from seed packet to bouquet by by Dorothy H. Jenkins; photographs by Gottscho-Schleisner; drawings by George L. Hollrock.
Call Number: SB405 .J43
Published/Created: 1945
Beyond the Architect's Eye by Mary N. Woods
Call Number: TR659 .W66 2009
ISBN: 9780812241082
Published/Created: 2009-03-09
Typical architectural photography freezes buildings in an ideal moment and rarely captures what photographer Berenice Abbott called the medium's power to depict "how the past jostled the present." In Beyond the Architect's Eye, Mary N. Woods expands on this range of images through a rich analysis that commingles art, amateur, and documentary photography, genres usually not considered architectural but that often take the built environment as their subject. Woods explores how photographers used their built environment to capture the disparate American landscapes prior to World War II, when urban and rural areas grew further apart in the face of skyscrapers, massive industrialization, and profound cultural shifts. Central to this study is the work of Alfred Stieglitz, Frances Benjamin Johnston, and Marion Post Wolcott, but Woods weaves a wider narrative that also includes Alice Austen, Gertrude Käsebier, Berenice Abbott, Margaret Bourke-White, Helen Levitt, Lisette Model, Louise Dahl-Wolfe, Morgan and Marvin Smith, Eudora Welty, Samuel Gottscho, Walker Evans, Max Waldman, and others. In such disparate places as New York City, the rural South, and the burgeoning metropolis of Miami, these unconventional architectural photographers observed buildings as deeply connected to their context. Whereas Stieglitz captured New York as the quintessential modern urban landscape in the period, the South was its opposite, a land supposedly frozen in the past. Yet just as this myth of the Old South crystallized in photographs like Johnston's, a New South shaped by popular culture and modern industry arose. Miami embodied both of these visions. In Wolcott's work, agricultural fields where stoop labor persisted were juxtaposed with Art Deco hotels, a popular modernism of the machine age that remade Miami Beach into a miniaturized "Manhattan on the beach." Beyond the Architect's Eye is a groundbreaking study that melds histories of American art, cities, and architecture with visual studies of landscape, photography, and cultural geography.

The following titles link to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog. Links to additional online content are included when available.

The Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts
Friedman, Alice T. “Merchandising Miami Beach: Morris Lapidus and the Architecture of Abundance.” The Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts, vol. 25 (2005): 216–253.
Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians
Gutman, Marta. “Race, Place, and Play: Robert Moses and the WPA Swimming Pools in New York City.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, vol. 67, no. 4 (2008): 532–561.

Serdari, T. (2005). Albert Mayer, architect and town planner: The case for a total professional
(ProQuest document ID: 305469042)
Abstract: In presenting the career of American architect and town planner, Albert Mayer, this dissertation brings to light a previously unstudied phase of New York City apartment house building and its relationship to the idea of community design.
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From his early years in the family real estate business, the J. H. Taylor Company, Mayer studied and implemented the concept of “neighborhood unit.” Mayer's activities in commercial real estate and architectural practice before the Second World War consisted of collaborations with other prominent architects, whose work was shaped according to Mayer's recommendations in terms of optimal air and light, generous courtyards, communal facilities for the residents' recreational needs, and commercial spaces.

Striving to create conditions of humane living within the city rather than to increase his profits, Mayer dedicated large part of his career as an architect and writer improving public housing and strengthening the position of the urban poor. Along with Lewis Mumford, Clarence Stein, and Henry Wright, Mayer founded the Housing Study Guild, whose mission was to improve housing by educating professionals and the public. Mayer's experience in commercial building and his theoretical work on “neighborhood unit” housing types culminated in the communities he built for the United States military during the Second Word War with the assistance of his partner Julian H. Whittlesey. As an Army Engineer stationed in Asia, Mayer implemented the first rural development project in Etawah, Uttar Pradesh in India where his role was seminal. In spite of demands stemming from his firm's engagements with several residential projects in the United States after the Second World War, Mayer, with his partners' assistance, completed a few of the most interesting buildings in New York City and at the same time provided the Indian government with master plans for several cities. They all attest to Mayer's dedication to creating humane environments in a variety of scales (from the apartment to the new city) and they provide the context to understanding Mayer's post-War North American full-scale neighborhood unit community, Kitimat, British Columbia, which he designed with his colleagues Clarence Stein and Julian H. Whittlesey.
Smiley, D. (2006). Pedestrian modern: Shopping, modern architecture and the American metropolis, 1935–1955
(ProQuest document ID: 305268092)
Abstract: This dissertation argues that the store and the shopping center were crucial instruments through which American architects between 1935 and 1955 interpreted and shaped modernist architectural and urban principles.
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The normalization of modernist formal and planning methods is an established avenue of study, but retail design has only recently been examined. Moreover, these two threads, modernist methods and retail design, are rarely considered to be related: shopping centers in particular are framed with respect to suburbanization and not to modern architecture and its discourse.

The dissertation follows the mid-twentieth century work of Kenneth Welch, Morris Ketchum and Victor Gruen, among other architects engaged in retail design, and examines and how they interacted with the contemporary professional and publishing cultures. In their practices, these architects joined modernist architectural theory not to corporate office buildings, cultural institutions or homes but to the most ostensibly "pedestrian" of program types. In both the dense commercial districts within the city core and the spreading settlement without, many architects and architectural observers framed the retail district or "store group" as a testing ground of modernist practices: efficient networks of circulation transparently rendered in steel, glass and aluminum. A variety of modernist urban, community and landscape planning strategies were deployed. The mid-century shopping center was an integral part of mid-century architectural and urban design theory, best understood in terms of the neighborhood unit and the superblock, and in terms of the combined effects of economic expansion and a broadly interpreted nuclear threat. And with population and consumption continuing their historic dispersal to the region, the dissertation also examines the rhetoric of "suburbanization". Used so often to index modernist planning effects, "suburbanization" has become allegorical, shifting meaning away from architecture towards one if its possible entanglements.

This "pedestrian modern" joins two threads that defined shopping in architectural culture at mid-century. By its complicity with consumption and mass culture, the store was a less respected professional undertaking. At the same time, the images and connotations of walking compensated for many of the problems of modernity.
Penick, M. M. (2007). The pace setter houses: Livable modernism in postwar America
(ProQuest document ID: 304830856)
Abstract: In 1946, House Beautiful's editor-in-chief Elizabeth Gordon launched the Pace Setter House Program, an annual series of exhibition houses that proposed a new modern architecture for postwar America. Set in direct opposition to Arts & Architecture's Case Study Houses, the Pace Setter houses criticized orthodox modernism, and offered a "livable" and distinctly American alternative.
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Organic design, particularly the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, further informed this new concept of American modernism, adding a rich layer of humanism, naturalism, and democratic idealism. Rejecting the Case Study prototype of universal solutions and prefabrication, the Pace Setter houses advocated a solution in which the craft of building guaranteed regional variation, artistic quality and individual expression. House Beautiful's Pace Setter Program, with its implicit organic roots, underscored one of the most charged architectural debates of the postwar period: the renewed tension between the specific and the general, the regional and the international, the individual and the collective. With the establishment of the Pace Setter House Program, Gordon developed a mature paradigm for the postwar house - and simultaneously created a dynamic public forum for architectural debate. With the Pace Setters as counterpoint, she lashed out against the architectural current to attack what she viewed as the greatest threat to American design: the unlivable, autocratic, and foreign modernism of the International Style. Gordon's role in the larger architectural debate was critical, not only in her vociferous opposition to what she viewed as a blind continuation of an oppressive modernist lineage, but in her stalwart support of alternative design tropes. The Pace Setter Houses and their architects - ranging from Cliff May to Alfred Browning Parker to Harwell Harris - represented one battlefield in the aesthetic and philosophical struggle between the emerging modernisms of the postwar period. Accompanied by Gordon's insistent voice and publications, the Pace Setters became ammunition in an architectural revolution that, for House Beautiful, lasted nearly twenty years. The Pace Setters chronicled the emergence of a vital strand of American modernism, and provided a lens through which to view the ultimate integration and acceptance of modernism within the mainstream of middle-class America.
Butler, J. (2012). A history of railroad depots in Bloomington, Indiana and Roanoke, Virginia
(ProQuest document ID: 1074791459)
This dissertation traces the history of train depots in, Bloomington Indiana, and Roanoke Virginia, using these buildings to examine changing conceptions of space, place and the railroad in the development of two dissimilar towns as they developed from the early nineteenth to late twentieth century.
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Focusing on the evolving location, function, style, and experience of each site's depots, the study considers a range of options by which Americans used the railroad as a means of connecting to one another through space—locally, within the urban landscape, and more broadly, between a city its region, and the country. Chapter One focuses on Bloomington, a small town sustained by the state college and the timber and stone industries. It details the evolving linkages provided by the rail system and how the expansion of travel offered by the depot changed local conceptions of connectedness and control. Chapter Two traces the history of Bloomington's depots in light of the town's internal connection with the railroad. It seeks to recover the complexity and multiplicity of the depots in their movement from spatial and social centrality to marginality. Chapter Three examines how landscape and transportation affected the creation of place in Roanoke, as it transformed from a tiny crossroads by a salt lick to an urban community based on railroads. The chapter follows the evolution of trails into railroads and examines how changing transportation options rearranged the city's built environment, while still conforming to tradition and nature. Chapter Four traces the history of Roanoke's depots from the city's creation, to the present day. The chapter considers the depots' architecture and internal spaces to establish their relationship to local conceptions of modernity and of the changing social and symbolic meaning of the railroad in local life. Taken together, the examples of Bloomington and Roanoke illustrate the range of ways in which the coming of the railroad altered both the local structure and extralocal connections of American towns and cities in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The careers of the depots reveal the transformation of America from a collection of semi-autonomous towns to an interconnected, urbanized web.
Hotten, A. L. (2018). Building bagel beach: An examination of Jewish architects and regional design in twentieth century Miami beach
(ProQuest document ID: 2079355929)
Abstract: This research critically examines the role that Jewish architects played in the development of several regional forms of architecture in Miami Beach during the midcentury period of the 1930s through the 1960s.
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From Tropical Art Deco through Miami Modernism (MiMo), Jewish architects were at the forefront of design in the region. Three Jewish architects are highlighted: Henry Hohauser, Norman Giller, and Morris Lapidus. Beyond documenting the role that these architects played in the region, this is an examination of how Jewish experience and identity in twentieth-century America shaped their careers and design influences. The profession of architecture has historically been exclusive and heavily WASP, while the resort industry was a battleground for Jewish inclusion in mainstream American society. These Jewish architects were both working on the margins of their profession, and at the same time were challenging social exclusion in the resort setting of Miami Beach.

Hedrich-Blessing Photographs with signatures by architects who designed the buildings (1937-2000)

Hedrich-Blessing Photographs with signatures by architects who designed the buildings
View digitized content from the Hedric-Blessing Signature Collection
Unique set of fifty nine large photographs (selections digitized) by Hedrich Blessing Photographers, an architectural photography firm established in Chicago in 1929. Each photograph was signed by the architect who design the building. Included are: Fallingwater by F.L. Wright, Expo ’67 by Buckminster Fuller, amongst others.
[Image: LC-DIG-ppmsca-54502]

Related collections outside of LC (external link):

Hedrich-Blessing photograph collection, part 1, [ca. 1929-1989, bulk 1933-1969] External (Chicago History Museum Collection)
Hedrich-Blessing photograph collection, part 2, [ca. 1969-1989, bulk 1970-1979] External (Chicago History Museum Collection)

books

The following title links to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog.

Building Images by Tony Hiss (Text by)
Call Number: TR659 .B85 2000
ISBN: 0811826570
Published/Created: 2000-09-01
Nobody can make a building soar like the architectural photographers of Hedrich Blessing. Since 1930, they have been the world's messenger of modern architecture. Based in Chicago, the architectural photography firm has achieved an international reputation that extends far beyond its regional association, and has made them the photographers of choice for some of the greatest architects of our time. Coinciding with a major retrospective at the Chicago Historical Society, Building Images: Seventy Years of Photography at Hedrich Blessing chronicles the history of this groundbreaking firm with close to 150 dazzling shots of architectural and design masterpieces by such greats as Mies van der Rohe, Frank Lloyd Wright, Albert Kahn, Eliel Saarinen, Bruce Graham, and many more. Architectural historian and memoirist Tony Hiss contributes a lyrical, insightful essay on what makes the assiduous photographers of Hedrich Blessing rise above the rest. Building Images brings the majesty, nuance, and poetry of our era's great buildings to light with these indelible photographs.

Highsmith (Carol M.) Archive (1980-)

Highsmith (Carol M.) Archive
View digitized content from the Highsmith Archive
View background information and search the Highsmith Archive
An extremely large photographic collection (mostly digitized) by the widely published American photographer, Carol M. Highsmith (1946-). The first group of more than 2,500 photographs documents buildings including those of US government, urban renewals, and historic preservation through the United States, dating from 1980 and 2005. In 2007, Highsmith started adding born digital photographs to the archive, beginning with a large project documenting the Library of Congress Jefferson Building. The Carol M. Highsmith’s America project, launched in 2009, is intended to document each state in the United States. Images for more than 71,600 photographs in 50 states will have been added to the Archive by 2024. The archive is expected to grow to more than 100,000 photographs. Highsmith has dedicated the rights to the American people for copyright free access.
[Image: LC-DIG-highsm- 24315]

The following titles link to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog. Links to additional online content are included when available.

Connecticut by Carol Highsmith; forward by James H. Billington; introduction by Walter W. Woodward. External
ISBN: 9781495124648
Published/Created: 2016
Photography by Carol M. Highsmith, featuring images from the George F. Landegger Connecticut Collection, Library of Congress. Published by Chelsea Publishing, Inc. in association with the Library of Congress.
The Library of Congress : America's memory by Carol M. Highsmith and Ted Landphair; preface by James H. Billington
Call Number: Z733.U6 H54 1994
ISBN: 1555911889
Published/Created: 1994-08-31
This vivid and useful insider's tour of "the world's greatest universal collection of human thought and creativity"--the Library of Congress--combines stunning color photography and informative text. The perfect keepsake for anyone visiting the library and the perfect substitute for those who cannot. 55 full-color photos.
Texas by Carol Highsmith; forward by James H. Billington; introduction by Lonn Taylor.
Call Number: F387 .H542 2014
ISBN: 9781495124631
Published/Created: 2014
This volume is part of the Library of Congress' ongoing project to create a photographic record of early 20th century America, state by state. "Texas" is drawn from the more than 5000 photographs from the Lyda Hill Texas Collection. Carol Highsmith spent six months producing a sweeping visual study of Texas, traveling and photographing a vast state as varied as the nation itself. [jacket inside cover]
Why Louisiana ain't Mississippi ... or any place else! by Carol M. Highsmith ; written by Jay Dardenn
Call Number: F369 .H53 2022
ISBN: 9780962087752
Published/Created: 2022

The following titles link to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog. Links to additional online content are included when available.

American Art
Madsen, Annelise K. “Civic Primer: Mural Painting’s New Education at the Library of Congress.” American Art, vol. 26, no. 2 (2012): 68–97.
Washington History
Chornesky, Michale B. “Confederate Island upon the Union's ‘Most Hallowed Ground’: The Battle to Interpret Arlington House, 1921-1937.” Washington History, vol. 27, no. 1 (2015): 20–33.
Verbrugge, Martha H., and Drew Yingling. “The Politics of Play: The Struggle over Racial Segregation and Public Recreation in Washington, D.C., 1945-1950.” Washington History, vol. 27, no. 2 (2015): 56–69.

The Picture This blog invites you to share our love of pictures and the stories they can tell. Produced by specialists from the Prints & Photographs Division, you’ll see unique images and pictorial collections available to researchers at the Library of Congress—more than 14.5 million photos, posters, cartoons, architectural designs, and historical and fine art prints, many of which are available online.

Keystone State Photographs Now Available
A Picture This blog introducing Highsmith's photos of the Keystone State–Pennsylvania (July 16, 2020).
Newly Available: From Louisiana to New Mexico with Carol M. Highsmith
A Picture This blog introducing Highsmith's photos from Louisiana to New Mexico (August 4, 2021).
The View from Above: Newly Added Photos from Carol M. Highsmith
A Picture This blog on Highsmith's photos of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, New Jersey, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia (December 26, 2018).
A Wide-Ranging View of West Virginia
A Picture This blog introducing Highsmith's photography of West Virginia (March 30, 2016).
Wide Open Spaces of Wyoming: Newly Added Photos from Carol M. Highsmith
A Picture This blog introducing Highsmith's photography of Wyoming (July 10, 2017).
If the Sign Fits
A Picture This blog comparing the same sign captured by two photographers, John Margolies and Carol M. Highsmith thirty years apart (August 9, 2023).

Why Louisiana Ain't Mississippi...Or Any Place Else! External
Carol Highsmith talks about life on the road as a photographer/documentarian and discusses the equipment she used to capture the stunning images featured in the documentary companion book, “Why Louisiana Ain’t Mississippi… or Any Place Else!”
Keynote Address: Carol Highsmith, American Photographer External
Highsmith’s keynote speech at the California Preservation Foundation.

Horydczak (Theodor) Photograph Collection (1915-1955, bulk ca. 1920-ca. 1950)

Horydczak (Theodor) Photograph Collection
View digitized content from the Horydczak Colleciton
View background information and search the Horydczak Colleciton
Approximately 14,350 photographs (fully digitized) by Theodor Horydczak (1890-1971), documenting the architecture and social life of Washington metropolitan area, primarily from ca. 1920 to ca. 1950, including exteriors and interiors of commercial, residential, and government buildings, as well as street scenes and views of neighborhoods.
[Image: LC-H814-T-0655-055]

Books
Articles & Blogs

The following title links to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog.

Washingtoniana by Kathleen K. Collins
Call Number: Z663.39 .W37 1989
ISBN: 0844405884
Published/Created: 1989-01-01

Another Miracle on 34th Street
A Picture This blog including a photo of the Empire State Building taken by Horydczak in 1933 (November 29, 2023).

Johnston (Frances B.) Photograph Collection (1913-1940)

Johnston (Frances B.) Photograph Collection
View digitized content from the Johnston Collection
View finding aid for the Johnston Collection
View collection overview of the Johnston Collection
View background information and search the Johnston Collection with link to most of the digitized content
Approximately 25,000 photographic materials (selections digitized) created and collected by early American photographer Frances Benjamin Johnston (1864-1952), including those depicting architecture in the U.S. concentrating on the South, Mid-Atlantic, New England, and the Pacific Coast, ranging ca. 1913-1940. Additionally, cities and buildings in Europe, Middle East, Bermuda, and across the U.S., photographed during her travels between ca. 1899-1922, can be found in the Collection.
[Image: LC-DIG-ppmsca-16264]

Related collections at LC (links go to catalog records):

Frances Benjamin Johnston papers, 1855-1956 (Manuscript Division Collection): A finding aid for the Frances Benjamin Johnston papers, 1855-1956.

The following titles link to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog. Links to additional online content are included when available.

The architecture of Georgia by Frederick Doveton Nichols; photos. by Van Jones Martin and Frances Benjamin Johnston; drawings by Frederick Spitzmiller; special research by Elizabeth MacGregor; edited by Mills Lane.
Call Number: NA730.G4 N48
Published/Created: 1976
Beyond the Architect's Eye by Mary N. Woods
Call Number: TR659 .W66 2009
ISBN: 9780812241082
Published/Created: 2009-03-09
Typical architectural photography freezes buildings in an ideal moment and rarely captures what photographer Berenice Abbott called the medium's power to depict "how the past jostled the present." In Beyond the Architect's Eye, Mary N. Woods expands on this range of images through a rich analysis that commingles art, amateur, and documentary photography, genres usually not considered architectural but that often take the built environment as their subject. Woods explores how photographers used their built environment to capture the disparate American landscapes prior to World War II, when urban and rural areas grew further apart in the face of skyscrapers, massive industrialization, and profound cultural shifts. Central to this study is the work of Alfred Stieglitz, Frances Benjamin Johnston, and Marion Post Wolcott, but Woods weaves a wider narrative that also includes Alice Austen, Gertrude Käsebier, Berenice Abbott, Margaret Bourke-White, Helen Levitt, Lisette Model, Louise Dahl-Wolfe, Morgan and Marvin Smith, Eudora Welty, Samuel Gottscho, Walker Evans, Max Waldman, and others. In such disparate places as New York City, the rural South, and the burgeoning metropolis of Miami, these unconventional architectural photographers observed buildings as deeply connected to their context. Whereas Stieglitz captured New York as the quintessential modern urban landscape in the period, the South was its opposite, a land supposedly frozen in the past. Yet just as this myth of the Old South crystallized in photographs like Johnston's, a New South shaped by popular culture and modern industry arose. Miami embodied both of these visions. In Wolcott's work, agricultural fields where stoop labor persisted were juxtaposed with Art Deco hotels, a popular modernism of the machine age that remade Miami Beach into a miniaturized "Manhattan on the beach." Beyond the Architect's Eye is a groundbreaking study that melds histories of American art, cities, and architecture with visual studies of landscape, photography, and cultural geography.
Frances Benjamin Johnston: the Hampton Album (Deluxe Edition) by Sarah Hermanson Meister (Editor); LaToya Ruby Frazier (Contribution by)
Call Number: LC2851.H333 J64 2019
ISBN: 9781633450806
Published/Created: 2019-06-25
Comprised of 159 extraordinary platinum plates, Frances Benjamin Johnston's Hampton Album documents life at the Hampton Institute marking a pivotal moment in this historically black university's history .Frances Benjamin Johnston (American, 1864-1952), one of the first women in America to work as a professional photographer, was commissioned in 1899 to photograph the Hampton Institute, then a thirty year old institution dedicated to the practical and academic education of freed slaves and Native Americans. What became known as the Hampton Album - comprised of 159 platinum plates exhibited in 1900 at the Exposition Universelle in Paris - is Johnston's signature work, and has become a touchstone for contemporary historians and artists. The leather-bound album was discovered serendipitously by Lincoln Kirstein in a Washington, D.C. bookstore during World War II and donated to MoMA in 1965.
The Photographic Legacy of Frances Benjamin Johnston by Maria Elizabeth Ausherman
Call Number: TR659 .A924 2009
ISBN: 9780813032955
Published/Created: 2009-03-01
Drawing upon Johnston's original papers and photographs from the Library of Congress, Maria Ausherman focuses on Johnston's most compendious project: to visually record the traditional architecture of the South across nine states.
Washingtoniana by Kathleen K. Collins
Call Number: Z663.39 .W37 1989
ISBN: 0844405884
Published/Created: 1989-01-01

The following titles link to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog. Links to additional online content are included when available.

American Art
Madsen, Annelise K. “Civic Primer: Mural Painting’s New Education at the Library of Congress.” American Art, vol. 26, no. 2 (2012): 68–97.
Art documentation : bulletin of the Art Libraries Society of North America
Gushee, Elizabeth M. “Travels Through the Old South: Frances Benjamin Johnston and the Vernacular Architecture of Virginia.” Art Documentation: Bulletin of the Art Libraries Society of North America, vol. 27, no. 1 (2008): 18–23.

Rosenblatt-Farrell, N. (2002). Corporate strategies and student bodies: The emergence of school portraiture as genre in 20th century photography
(ProQuest document ID: 304798477)
Abstract: Every year, nearly every school child in the United States sits for a school portrait photograph. This dissertation examines the history of school portraiture as it emerged in the 20th century, first considering the fine art work of Frances Benjamin Johnston, who was commissioned to photograph students at: the Hampton Normal and Industrial Institute; the Carlisle Indian School at Carlisle, Pennsylvania; Tuskegee Normal and Agricultural Institute; the Military Academy at West Point; and the Naval Academy at Annapolis. Johnston's photographs reveal tensions between portraiture, documentary, and corporate photographs produced for public relations.
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Although independent studios began producing yearly, individual, bust portraits of every student in schools around 1920, contemporary school portrait practices coalesced with the formation of the Professional School Photographers Association International in 1951. This industry organization fostered cooperation between school photographers and established technical standards. The PSPA also provided studios with a collective voice audible to the populations they served and the material suppliers upon which they depended.

Many contemporary artists employ school portraits directly in their work or reference the idiom of school portraiture, which emphasizes the particular identity of each subject and artifact while operating through ritualized repetition. The formal simplicity of school portraits permits artists and audiences alike to cathect a wide variety of meanings and functions into these images.Every year, nearly every school child in the United States sits for a school portrait photograph. This dissertation examines the history of school portraiture as it emerged in the 20th century, first considering the fine art work of Frances Benjamin Johnston, who was commissioned to photograph students at: the Hampton Normal and Industrial Institute; the Carlisle Indian School at Carlisle, Pennsylvania; Tuskegee Normal and Agricultural Institute; the Military Academy at West Point; and the Naval Academy at Annapolis. Johnston's photographs reveal tensions between portraiture, documentary, and corporate photographs produced for public relations.
Jameson, K. V. (2004). Society matrons, working girls, fair maidens, and new women: Frances Benjamin Johnston and the construction of gender
(ProQuest document ID: 305205958)
Abstract: The image and social role of women were enduring concerns for Frances Benjamin Johnston (1865–1952), as evidenced in her photographic, written, and other production. The twenty-year period I have chosen to study (1890–1910) was one of great flux for the definition of these roles and Johnston's work reflects this transitional era in American culture. Indeed, the flux and uncertainty of the period are mirrored by Johnston's own uncertain relationship to her milieu and the inherent ambiguity in many of her photographs of women, issues that emerge as overarching themes in this text.
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I employ the framework of gender to analyze Johnston's efforts to document and construct female roles. Within this framework I utilize biographical, historical, formal, and sociological approaches, in order to offer a more nuanced, if not conflicted, “portrait” of Johnston and her work than is present in previous scholarship.

Chapters 2 and 3 provide biographical and historical background with the aim of illuminating how Johnston's life and professional aspirations informed her representation of women. The following five chapters address specifically Johnston's photographs of women, which I have categorized into four “series”: portraits of society women, photojournalistic essays featuring female workers, pictorialist compositions, and images of “New Women,” which include Johnston's own self-portraits. Finally, Johnston's efforts at shaping roles for women through written essays and an exhibition of the work of American female photographers at the 1900 Paris Universal Exposition are examined. These groups of photographs by Johnston and her other activities have not been previously discussed together.

Johnston both adhered to and subverted conventional depictions of women and their social role. While doing so, she maintained a commitment to the exploration of possibilities for female representation and roles. An examination of her strategies, subject matter, and engagement with her milieu illuminates not only Johnston and her work but also our understanding of the interrelationship between photography and the role of American women at the turn of the twentieth century.
Bergman, R. R. (2006). Visions of American progress: The photographs of francs Benjamin Johnston at the Paris exposition of 1900
(ProQuest document ID: 305316691)
Abstract:Frances Benjamin Johnston was a prominent studio photographer and photojournalist at the turn of the twentieth century. She presented three bodies of work at the Paris Exposition Universelle in 1900: a collection of photographs by American women, a series of photographs of students in the Washington, D.C., school system, and a series of photographs of students from the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute. These exhibits all promoted the nationalistic agenda of progress at the Paris Exposition, illustrating American advancement in art, education, and society.
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The Hampton photographs, in particular, have become well-known in the twentieth century in connection with The Hampton Album exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in 1966. These photographs are significant, not only for their aesthetic value, but for their historical meaning as documents of nineteenth-century progress for a school, a country, and a people.
Reeder, S. E. (2007). Reevaluating the Carnegie survey: New uses for Frances Benjamin Johnston’s pictorial archive
(ProQuest document ID: 1961606349)
Denny, M. H. (2010). From commerce to art: American women photographers 1850–1900
(ProQuest document ID: 807668033)
Abstract: From Commerce to Art: American Women Photographers 1850-1900 is the first thorough investigation of nineteenth-century American women's engagement with photography as commercial photographers and as amateur art photographers. Through expanded case studies, the research brings together examples of previously unknown women to illustrate that women were actively engaged with photography from the onset of the medium in America. By examining the popular and professional press, advertisements, diaries and letters, and the photographs themselves, this research also brings to light an extensive body of new primary materials.
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The study considers how gender informed women's experience as photographers, artists, and entrepreneurs in relationship to their roles as women, and the complex intersection of these categories. It argues that although the traditional ideal for women did not fit the public arena of photography, women went beyond the domestic sphere, expanding gender roles and ultimately changed the field of photography through their dedication as studio owners, camera operators, writers, lecturers, and competitors. Finally, through their engagement with the relatively new artistic and commercially viable medium, women broke barriers, displayed agency, gained confidence, independence, and a sense of freedom.

Part One, Commerce explores commercial women photographers, typically married women in partnership with their husbands or widows who took over businesses begun by their husbands. Later in the century, the second-generation of commercial women photographers appeared on the urban scene, many of them single women entrepreneurs. Their experiences mirrored the changing demographics of America with its influx of immigrant groups and growth of metropolitan areas.

Part Two, Art looks at the growth of amateur art photography in America and women's camera club affiliations as a manifestation of the rise of consumer culture, women's club movement, increased leisure time, and photography as an artistic pursuit. For these women, the impetus to take up photography grew out of the changing status of the medium By now, photography was evolving into an appropriate leisure-time activity and a fine-art form. The final section traces the experience of other women who ventured farther afield, traveling to the American West to document its sublime scenery and local culture.
March, D. M. (2012). Reframing blackness: The photograph and African American literary modernism at the turn of the twentieth century
(ProQuest document ID: 1037823485)
Abstract: This dissertation explores the photograph's place in African American writing between the end of Reconstruction and the beginning of the Harlem Renaissance.
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Examining illustrated periodicals, ornate gift-books, literary anthologies, race encyclopedias and "who's who" volumes, posters and prints showcasing literary icons, and unpublished scrapbooks, I piece together a history of the first concerted effort by African American writers to mediate race—to "frame blackness"—for a broad audience. Their literary productions engage the photograph's evolving capacity to render human subjects "samples" and "types" of particular categories: the criminal, the prostitute, the colonial subject, the fashionable woman, the normative American family. Harnessing (and sometimes interrogating) the photograph's capacity to "sample," turn-of-the-century African American writers experimented with textual format and literary form in pursuit of new, modern racial representations. This dissertation recuperates these multimedia experiments, contextualizing them as early modernist works whose formal and thematic innovations and interventions would shape African American literary history for decades.

The lives and works of four writers—Paul Laurence Dunbar, Pauline Hopkins, Booker T. Washington, and James Weldon Johnson—structure this inquiry. Each chapter takes up a different author. My method, a combination of archival work, biography, and close reading, allows me to recover works often left out of conventional literary histories, like Dunbar's collaborations with the Hampton Camera Club, the short-lived Woman's Era magazine which propelled the national consolidation of the African American women's club movement in the mid-1890s, and Booker T. Washington's Working with the Hands—billed as the "sequel" to Up from Slavery and illustrated with photographs by Frances Benjamin Johnston. This approach reveals the historical contingency of the production of the African American tradition and recovers multiple erasures of founding efforts to delineate its origins. Organized chronologically with some overlap, the chapters tell a story of multiple, contested visions for modern black subjecthood and modern black literary production which presage (and more thoroughly contextualize) the better-known developments of the Harlem Renaissance.
Wilbanks, V. A. (2016). Preserving the architectural landscape of the south through the photographic lens: Frances Benjamin Johnston and her Carnegie survey of the architecture of the south
(ProQuest document ID: 1848288588)
Abstract: Noted photographer Frances Benjamin Johnston (1864-1952) embarked on a project to document the restored Chatham Estate and surrounding buildings in Virginia from 1927 through 1929. The success of this project inspired her to continue to capture crumbling high style and vernacular architecture throughout the South with the hopes of aiding in the preservation of these buildings. Funded by the Carnegie Corporation, her efforts lasted until 1944, spanning nine southern states and producing more than 7,000 photographs of an estimated 1,700 architectural structures. By delving into the history of Johnston’s photographic career and contributions, in this thesis I will take a deeper look into Johnston’s Carnegie Survey of the Architecture of the South and examine how it fit into the cultural context of preservation efforts of the period, and how it affected historical preservation of southern architecture as a whole.

Frances Benjamin Johnston Puts Her Stamp on Documenting Work at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing
A Picture This blog introducing Johnston's documentation stamps (May 3, 2019).
Frances Benjamin Johnston’s Hampton Album: A Researcher’s Exploration
A Picture This blog introducing an interview with Jane Pierce, Carl Jacobs Foundation Research Assistant in the Department of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art, who visited the Prints & Photographs Division to study photographs of Hampton Institute by Frances Benjamin Johnston (December 19, 2019).
A Gardening Gold Mine
A Picture This blog introducing Sam Watter's book "Gardens for a Beautiful America: 1895-1935" and Frances Benjamin Johnston Collection (April 9, 2012).
Overlooked No More: Frances B. Johnston, Photographer Who Defied Genteel Norms External
A New York Times article on Francis Benjamin Johnston. You are required to have an account to read the article.
New Video Series on “Reading” Pictures: Every Photo is a Story
A Picture This blog introducing a new video series talking about the Prints & Photographs Division collections, including that of Frances Benjamin Johnson (July 16, 2015).

The Library’s webcasts provide opportunities to learn more about the Library collections and special subjects, through recording of talks by creators, authors, and Library specialists. About 400,000 programs have been recorded and nearly 10,000 are available online.

Every Photo Is a Story Part 1: Start to Read a Photograph
Kristi Finefield and Sam Watters discuss the ways to uncover the story in photographs, specifically a series of hand-colored lantern slides of historic gardens and homes created by Frances Benjamin Johnston in the early 20th century. In Part One, Finefield and Watters discuss how to read photographs and develop visual literacy skills.
Every Photo Is a Story Part 2: Get to Know the Photographer
Kristi Finefield and Sam Watters discuss the ways to uncover the story in photographs, specifically a series of hand-colored lantern slides of historic gardens and homes created by Frances Benjamin Johnston in the early 20th century. In Part Two, Finefield and Watters discuss researching the photographer's life and career, and the research benefits of knowing more about the person behind the camera. (Event date: July 13, 2015).
Every Photo Is a Story Part 3: Consider How the Photos Were Made
Kristi Finefield and Sam Watters discuss the ways to uncover the story in photographs, specifically a series of hand-colored lantern slides of historic gardens and homes created by Frances Benjamin Johnston in the early 20th century. In Part Three, Finefield and Watters discuss influences on the photographic object itself, including camera and film technology, manipulations made after the fact, and audience expectations.
Every Photo Is a Story Part 4: Explore the Photographer's Era
Kristi Finefield and Sam Watters discuss the ways to uncover the story in photographs, specifically a series of hand-colored lantern slides of historic gardens and homes created by Frances Benjamin Johnston in the early 20th century. In Part Four, Finefield and Watters discuss researching the era in which a photograph was made in order to discover events and movements that may have influenced the creation and composition of the photograph. They also cover considering photographs as works of art, and learning about conventions for composition and visual communication.
Every Photo Is a Story Part 5: Interpret the Stories You Discover
Kristi Finefield and Sam Watters discuss the ways to uncover the story in photographs, specifically a series of hand-colored lantern slides of historic gardens and homes created by Frances Benjamin Johnston in the early 20th century. In Part Five, Finefield and Watters discuss stories behind the photographs of the Blue Garden discussed throughout the series. All of the tools and tips from Parts One through Four come into play.
Picturing the New American Garden, a lecture with Sam Watters 6/19/12 External
With hand-colored photographs not seen since the 1930s, this lecture presents the story of photographer Frances Benjamin Johnston (1864-1952) who pioneered garden photography as gardeners embraced professional landscape architecture as a fine art necessary for a rich and civilized nation. From Massachusetts to Virginia, from New York to California, Johnston photographed gardens coast to coast and promoted a greener and more beautiful America through illustrated lantern slide presentations. This talk is coordinated with the release of Gardens for a Beautiful America, 1895-1935, Photographs by Frances Benjamin Johnston, written by Sam Watters and published by Acanthus Press in coordination with the Library of Congress that preserves the Johnston archive. This spring the library will launch Watters’ on-line catalog of the Johnston slide collection, comprised of over 1000 photographs of gardens, plants, and garden-related images. Sam Watters writes and lectures on houses and gardens, with a dedicated interest in America at 1900. Educated at Yale University and the University of Marseilles, he has written articles, essays and books on wide-ranging subjects—19th century sanatoriums, cactus theft in the Mohave desert, photographing Hollywood at home and the revivalist houses and gardens of Los Angeles. He lives in New York and L.A. (Event date: June 19, 2012)
Picturing a Beautiful America with Curator Sam Watters External
As guardians of home and community, women in 1900 launched the Garden Beautiful movement, a response to the environmental wreckage of the industrial Gilded Age. Confident that new landscape design and horticulture could green America back to beauty, they founded garden clubs and hired professional photographers to publicize their hopeful message. With spectacular colored slides not seen since 1930, Curator of Gardens for a Beautiful America: The Women Who Photographed Them Sam Watters presents a virtual tour of estate gardens, East and West, as seen through the eyes and lenses of three pioneering photojournalists who used new camera technologies and the rise of photo-editorials in national magazines to define and interpret the new American garden. (Event date: June 10, 2014).

Korab (Balthazar) Photographic Archive (1950-2011, bulk 1970-2000)

Korab (Balthazar) Photographic Archive
View digitized content from the Korab Collection
View finding aid for the Balthazar Korab collection
View research guide for the Balthazar Korab collection
Over 540,000 images (selections digitized) documenting the creative work of Balthazar Korab (1926-2013), one of the three most significant American architectural photographers of the second half of the 20th century. The archive reveals his personal interest through extensive photographs of Michigan and the Midwest, Italy, and American car culture among other topics, ranging between 1950 and 2011 (bulk: 1970-2000). Includes many buildings designed by Eero Saarinen.
[Image: LC-DIG-ppmsca-72262]

The following title links to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog.

Eero Saarinen by David G. De Long; C. Ford Peatross
Call Number: NA737.S28 A4 2008
ISBN: 9780393732238
Published/Created: 2008-06-17
A timely portrait of the work of an architect who expanded the vocabulary of modern architecture. Eero Saarinen and Balthazar Korab constitute a unique team in the history of architecture: Saarinen, the mid-twentieth-century architect who challenged the architectural conventions of his time; and Korab, an architect in Saarinen's office whose perceptive photographs reveal the brilliance of Saarinen's work. This visual sourcebook illustrates nineteen Saarinen commissions in photographs drawn from Korab's archive, providing multiple views of the buildings themselves and some views of their construction and of architectural models that were critical to their design. Images of Saarinen's office and home provide personal ambience, and an introductory essay positions Saarinen's work within the broader context of his time. Seen in detail, such earlier works as the General Motors Technical Center (1948-56) or the Miller house (1953-57) show departures from orthodox modernism; Saarinen's assured handling of new materials and new building functions impart lasting value to his career, as seen in the Trans World Airlines Terminal (1956-62) and Dulles International Airport (1958-63), which have become iconic images. 464 pages of color including 800 illustrations plus a CD-ROM of all illustrations in the book.

The following titles link to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog. Links to additional online content are included when available.

Future Anterior: Journal of Historic Preservation, History, Theory, and Criticism
Loeffler, Jane C. “The State Department and the Politics of Preservation: Why Few U.S. Embassies Are Landmarks.” Future Anterior: Journal of Historic Preservation, History, Theory, and Criticism, vol. 13, no. 1, (2016): 99–123.
Abstract: The most tangible evidence of America's overseas diplomatic presence is often its embassies. Their buildings cannot speak for themselves, but as this paper reveals, when documented, they tell a remarkable story of political and cultural aspiration and diplomatic accomplishment set amid an ever-changing and challenging landscape.
Grey Room
Salomon, David L. “Divided Responsibilities: Minoru Yamasaki, Architectural Authorship, and the World Trade Center.” Grey Room, no. 7 (2002): 86–95.
Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment
Uechi, Naomi. “Emersonian Transcendentalism in Frank Lloyd Wright's Unity Temple.” Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, vol. 7, no. 2 (2000): 95–113.
Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians
Loeffler, Jane C. “The Architecture of Diplomacy: Heyday of the United States Embassy-Building Program, 1954-1960.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, vol. 49, no. 3 (1990): 251–278.
Abstract: In 1954 the United States Department of State embarked on a bold embassy-building program that gave American architects a chance to play a new role as representatives of their country. In a major departure from precedent, the State Department appointed an architectural advisory panel of prominent architects to review all building plans for the Foreign Buildings Office (FBO). Under new guidelines, architects were challenged to produce schemes that would harmonize with differing local conditions, respect local customs, and respond to the historical uniqueness of each locale. At the same time, they were asked to create structures with a "distinguishable American flavor." To fit the local scene, but to be "American," to harmonize with the past, yet to be both workable and new-these were the design dilemmas inherent in the FBO building program. How architects approached these problems and how they managed to reconcile or not to reconcile the often conflicting demands of the program are the subject of this study. The design expressions reveal much about how the United States related to the world and how it viewed itself as well.

Kanuss, C.A. (1982). A History Of Bronson Park, Kalamazoo, Michigan From 1829 To 1940
(ProQuest document ID: 303273412)
Abrahamson, M. (2019). Testing the establishment: Authorial signature and professional method in the architecture of Gunnar barkers, 1958–81
(ProQuest document ID: 2314066435)
Abstract: Though he was once among the most recognizable names in American architecture, Gunnar Birkerts has largely been overlooked in the historiography of late modernism. Birkerts was an unusually introspective and self-reflective architect and his collections therefore offer a view into the complex intertwining of the personal and the professional for entrepreneurial architects with eponymous firms. Through analyses of Birkerts’s projects, practice, and pedagogy, the dissertation narrates the confluence of two realities: the persistence of a belief in the artistry of architects and the emergence of conditions that stretched their model of production to its breaking point. Consisting of intensive analyses of four key projects across the US by the firm Gunnar Birkerts and Associates (GBA), the chapters outline the ideas about artistry that continued to shape this firm’s working methods even as large projects prompted Birkerts and his employees to take on new management protocols. Archival records of these projects illustrate the ways Birkerts assured that his authorial signature matched the output of GBA, and vice versa. The dissertation shows how architecture’s turn toward Postmodernism directed architects to fashion themselves as distinctive personalities with signature approaches to design, and that for Birkerts, this self-fashioning was accompanied by a rejection of more bureaucratic working methods and by increased focus on, and specialization within, the more obviously artistic domains of architectural practice.

Ready for Research: Balthazar Korab Collection
A Picture This blog introducing the launch of the finding aid for the Korab Collection (October 16, 2020).

Lincoln (Fay S.) Architectural Photographs (1915-1959)

Lincoln (Fay S.) Architectural Photographs
View digitized content from the Lincoln Collection
Approximately 570 items, mainly photographic prints by Fay Sturtevant Lincoln (1894-1975), including buildings in New York City, South Carolina, North Carolina, Long Island, Virginia, New Jersey and other locations. Also includes diaries, photographs, and other materials from his military service in France during WWI and his attendance at Besançon University.
[Image: LC-USZC4-4839]

Related collections outside of LC (external link):

Fay S. Lincoln Photograph Collection, 1920-1968 External (Penn State University Collection)

McGrath (Norman) Photograph Collection (1960-)

McGrath (Norman) Photograph Collection
Over 145,000 photographs in various formats by Norman McGrath (1931-), starting from 1960 to current, covering architectural topics, majority of which are from New York City or New York State. Includes contemporary memorials, museums, skyscrapers, transportation centers, and landscape designs by leading architects.

The following titles link to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog. Links to additional online content are included when available.

Architectural Photography by Norman McGrath
Call Number: TR659 .M379 2009
ISBN: 9780817424558
Published/Created: 2009-08-18
The definitive guide to achieving artistic and commercial success in modern architectural photography–from industry leader Norman McGrath. Looking to achieve artistic and commercial success in architectural photography? Norman McGrath’s long-awaited guide is the only one you’ll need. Here, McGrath fully revamps and expands on the basics covered in Photographing Buildings Inside and Out to include the most up-to-date information–from changes in the industry to equipment, techniques, and technologies. Architectural Photography covers it all: interiors, exteriors, skyscrapers, residential, office buildings, restaurants and hotels, religious buildings, museums, historic buildings, and specialized subjects such as staircases, sculpture, and ceilings. It also includes master McGrath’s sage, real-world advice. Most important, this guide is filled with spectacular and often iconic photography that captures the power and impact of these spaces–the ultimate goal of the architectural photographer.
Manhattan Skyscrapers by Eric Nash; Norman McGrath (By (photographer))
Call Number: NA6232 .N37 2010
ISBN: 9781568989679
Published/Created: 2010-08-18
What do you picture when you think of New York City? For most, it is the city's distinctive skyline, made famous bycountless movies and photographs. Everyone in Manhattan, whether first-time visitor or longtime resident, experiences the awe of gazing up at the soaring stone, steel, and glass towers of Wall Street or Midtown, and wonders how those structures came to be built. First published in 1999, Manhattan Skyscrapers was the first book to document the most important peaks in the city's concrete canyons. From the earliest skyscrapers built in thecity--such as the 1896 American Tract Society Building--to the most well known, including the Woolworth, Empire State, and Chrysler buildings, the book has become the definitive reference work on the Big Apple's skyline. Now available in a revised third edition, Manhattan Skyscrapers presents more than a century's worth of New York's most fascinating and important buildings. Each skyscraper is presented with informative and entertaining texts by New York Times contributor Eric Nash, a striking full-page photograph by architectural photographer Norman McGrath, archival images, interior views, and architectural drawings. In addition to the eighty-five buildings documented in previous versions of the book, Manhattan Skyscrapers showcases eight of the most exciting new skyscrapers built in the past few years. These wonderfully diverse additions to the city--the New York Times Building by Renzo Piano, the Standard Hotel byPolshek Partnership Architects, 7 World Trade Center by SOM, the Blue Tower by Bernard Tschumi, Bank of America Tower by Cook + Fox, 11 Times Square by FXFOWLE, 200 West Street by Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, and 425 Fifth Avenue by Michael Graves--give an indication of how the city continues to evolve in the twenty-first century. Manhattan Skyscrapers is an indispensable book for both the serious student of architecture and the casual collector of all things New York.
New York's Pennsylvania Stations by Hilary Ballon; Norman McGrath
Call Number: TF302.N7 B35 2002
ISBN: 0393730786
Published/Created: 2002-05-17
This is a guided tour through the past, present, and future of great civic architecture in New York City. It tells the story of Pennsylvania Station: the original building, its tragic demolition in the 1960s, and the new station designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and now under construction. In stunning photographs by Norman McGrath the hidden structure of Penn Station is revealed along with the burial of the station beneath Madison Square Garden. Richly illustrated essays by Hilary Ballon and Marilyn Taylor, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill celebrated new chair, on the old and new stations illuminate their connections and indicate how public architecture and transportation planning can enhance the way millions of people experience New York City.

The following titles link to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog. Links to additional online content are included when available.

The following title links to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog.

Studies in the Decorative Arts
Holliday, Kate. “Walls as Curtains: Architecture and Humanism in Ralph Walker's Skyscrapers of the 1920s.” Studies in the Decorative Arts, vol. 16, no. 2 (2009): 39–65.

Ellis, R. (2007). Picturing Pennsylvania station: Visualizing a New York City landmark, 1903 to 2006
(ProQuest document ID:301700150)
Abstract: New York's Pennsylvania Station is a cultural landmark and a monumental gateway. It is a private and a public space that is commercial and democratic. Because the original Pennsylvania Station was important economically and culturally to New York City, it has been the subject of consistent visual representation since its design in 1903.
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Previous studies of Pennsylvania Station, such as New York's Pennsylvania Stations (2002), a collection of essays by Hilary Ballon, Norman McGrath, and Marilyn Jordan-Taylor, use the visual record of the station as mere illustration. These studies neglect a close examination of the visual evidence in favour of providing images that complement a straightforward historical narrative. In contrast, I argue that the visual record informs us of much more. Visual representations of Pennsylvania Station evince the social and cultural significance of this place. Maps, plans, drawings, paintings, photographs, film, and digital renderings reveal a complex dynamic between the station and the public. Visual representations of Pennsylvania Station are legitimate, readable texts in their own right and provide examples of both real and simulated spaces. These representations bring to the discussion a less deterministic perspective on the cultural history of the site and open the door to more interpretive readings. The visual record provides an opportunity to take a fresh look at the social life and character of the station and its environs by examining elements of intentionality and inadvertence in the creation of that record. Rather than serving only as practical or artistic records of an important landmark, the visual record of Pennsylvania Station tells a historical narrative that is as diverse and complex as any written historical record of the station.

What Makes Architectural Photography Different
Noted architectural photographer Norman McGrath discusses the unique approaches and styles to architectural photography (Event date: March 17, 2016).
USModernist Radio - Architecture You Love: Architecture Photographer Norman McGrath + Musical Guest Sherry Petta External
Podscasts interview with Norman McGrath whose photographs over the course of 6 decades have appeared everywhere from Progressive Architecture to Architecture Record.
2024 USModernist Presents Norman McGrath on Penn Station External
One thing even devout Classicists and Modernists agree on is that New York's Penn Station should have never been destroyed. USModernist Radio presents a Zoom talk with legendary architecture photographer Norman McGrath, who was there during the demolition, taking photos, in the early 1960's. (Event date: May 30, 2024).

Peyser and Patzig Architectural Photography of New York City (ca. 1900-ca. 1920)

Peyser and Patzig Architectural Photography of New York City
View digitized content from the Peyser and Patzig Architectural Photography of New York City
Approximately 1,000 negatives and vintage and modern prints (selections digitized) by the New York Firm Peyser and Patzig (active 1920s – 1930s). Most of the materials are photographic prints of New York City, such as Chrysler Building.
[Image: LC-DIG-ds-05208]

Tebbs (Robert W.) Collection (1917-1942)

Tebbs (Robert W.) Collection
Nearly 4,000 photographic materials by an architectural photographer Robert W. Tebbs (1876?-1945), showing buildings throughout the eastern and southern states.

Trager (Philip) Photograph Archive (1968-2008)

Trager (Philip) Photograph Archive
View digitized content from the Trager Archive
Approximately 2,500 prints & digital photographs by Philip Trager (1935-) between 1968 and 2008, focusing on architecture, mainly in New York City and its surrounding areas, and dance.
[Image: LC-DIG-ppmsca-11680]

Books

The following title links to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog.

Photographs of Architecture by Philip Trager (Photographer); Samuel M. Green (Contribution by)
Call Number: NA730.C8 T73
ISBN: 0819550035
Published/Created: 1977-03-01

Underhill Collection (first half of the 20th century)

Underhill Collection
View digitized content from the Underhill Collection
Approximately 1,500 photographs (selections digitized) by Irving Underhill (1872-1960) during the first half of the 20th century focusing on buildings and landscapes mostly in New York City.
[Image: LC-DIG-ppmsca-54251]

Vergara (Camilo J.) Photograph Collection (from 1970s-)

Vergara (Camilo J.) Photograph Collection
View digitized content from the Vergara Collection
View collection overview of the Vergara Collection
View research guide for African American Communities in America's Cities: Photographs by Camilo J. Vergara
View research guide for Camilo José Vergara Photographs: Tracking Time to Document America’s Post-Industrial Cities
Over 15,000 photographs in print and digital format (mostly available online) by Camilo José Vergara (1944-), documenting structures and urban environment. Includes his early work on cemeteries throughout the United States from the 1970s, followed by remarkable time-lapse sequences beginning in the 1980s that highlight single locations in Harlem and the Bronx in New York City; Camden and Newark in New Jersey; Chicago, Illinois; Gary, Indiana; Detroit, Michigan; and Los Angeles, California. Documentation photographs of the New York City during COVID-19 have also been added to the Collection.
[Image: LC-DIG-vrg-00113]

The following titles link to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog. Links to additional online content are included when available.

Detroit Is No Dry Bones by Camilo Jose Vergara
Call Number: HN80.D6 V47 2016
ISBN: 9780472130115
Published/Created: 2016-11-16
Over the past 25 years, award-winning ethnographer and photographer Camilo José Vergara has traveled annually to Detroit to document not only the city's precipitous decline but also how its residents have survived. From the 1970s through the 1990s, changes in Detroit were almost all for the worse, as the fabric of the city was erased through neglect and abandonment. But over the last decade, Detroit has seen the beginnings of a positive transformation, and the photography in Detroit Is No Dry Bones provides unique documentation of the revival and its urbanistic possibilities. Beyond the fate of the city's buildings themselves, Vergara's camera has consistently sought to capture the distinct culture of this largely African American city. The photographs in this book, for example, are organized in part around the way people have re-used and re-purposed structures from the past. Vergara is unique in his documentation of local churches that have re-occupied old bank buildings and other impressive structures from the past and turned them into something unexpectedly powerful architecturally as well as spiritually.
Silent Cities by Kenneth Jackson; Camilo J. Vergara
Call Number: GT3203 .J33 1989
ISBN: 0910413223
Published/Created: 1996-01-01
Urban historian Kenneth Jackson (The Encyclopedia of New York) and photographer Camilo Vergara collaborate to present a fascinating and beautiful examination of the American cemetery.

The following titles link to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog. Links to additional online content are included when available.

American Art
Orvell, Miles. “America in Ruins: Photography as Cultural Narrative.” American Art, vol. 29, no. 1 (2015): 9–14.
Amerikastudien / American Studies
Orvell, Miles. “Photographing Disaster: Urban Ruins and the Destructive Sublime.” Amerikastudien / American Studies, vol. 58, no. 4 (2013): 647–671.
Abstract: Photographers have recorded disaster and ruins for over a hundred years, but more recently the spectacle of material destruction has been a central and disturbing feature of American culture. This essay focuses on three sites of massive urban destruction: the city of Detroit, which has been succumbing gradually to decay under the weight of its economic collapse; the city of New Orleans, partially destroyed by the force of Hurricane Katrina in 2005; and New York City, whose World Trade Center was subject to attack and obliteration by AI Qaeda in 2001. Examining the work of documentary photographers Camilo Jose Vergara, Andrew Moore, Robert Polidori, John Woodin, James Nachtwey, and Joel Meyerowitz, I argue in this essay for the existence of a new category of visual representation: the destructive sublime. Exploring the range of aesthetic approaches taken in representing catastrophe, I also analyze the mixed response we have to such images—a response that combines moral and ethical revulsion with aesthetic wonder and awe. The essay concludes with the claim that photography has worked against our tendency to amnesia, functioning in the twenty-first century as the necessary cultural historian of our distressed time.

Grummitt, J. (2014). American acropolis, American ruins: Camilo José Vergara’s repeat photography as imagistic history
(ProQuest document ID: 1462867304)
Abstract: Since 1979, photographer and sociologist Camilo José Vergara has taken repeat photographs of American cities in decline, focusing on evolving landscapes of postindustrial decay. Vergara's images subscribe to an aesthetic of ruin while providing a record of America's crumbling ghettos rooted in social documentary concerns. Vergara's work diverges from the historical tendencies of contemporary ruin porn photography: by challenging the photograph's temporal stasis Vergara bears witness to the ongoing reality of disenfranchisement, assembling an archive that takes up the Benjaminian task of doing history in images. Vergara's photographs challenge standard photojournalistic portrayals of violence, particularly the ways in which `violent' African American and Hispanic inner city populations have been erroneously cast as the cause of their own economic misfortune. The Invincible Cities website assists Vergara in drawing attention to forgotten places but also complicates his mandate to engage outside viewers by distancing them from the real-world environments his photographs portray.
Cialdella, J. S. (2015). Gardens in the machine: Cultural and environmental change in Detroit, 1879 - 2010
(ProQuest document ID: 1705833787)
Abstract: This dissertation argues that parks, gardens, yards, and other landscapes created by residents and city leaders are crucially important to understanding the history of metropolitan Detroit, Michigan between 1879 and 2010.
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The project examines how residents and city leaders negotiated social boundaries such as race and class by remaking the landscape to create a more hospitable sense of place in an overwhelmingly industrial region and endowing it with environmental values, which continue to affect the city and larger region today. Each chapter focuses on different iterations of Detroit's landscape at various scales and proximity to the central city, such as Belle Isle Park and Pingree's Potato Patches, to African American yards, an outdoor camp called Green Pastures, metropolitan parks, community gardens, and photographs of the city's post-industrial decline. These case studies reveal how varied strands of environmental thought changed over time, were made tangible on the landscape, and were adapted to meet the circumstances of different generations of people in the city. Used to instill social order or contest it, reconcile the inequalities of industrial capitalism, or imagine a middle class way of life, Detroit's cultural landscape was a dynamic terrain that residents of the region utilized to change the land and themselves. By looking for the meaning of nature in the crucible of American industry and urban decline, this dissertation demonstrates that we can trace the roots of American environmentalism not only to a distant wilderness, but also to complex spaces on the peripheries of urban life. The gardens in the machine of industrial capitalism were where residents and city leaders invented, contested, and defined ideas and ideals about urbanism, nature, and each other through outdoor spaces.
Belz, E. E. (2020). Is it art? looking at “Ruin porn” through the lens of theological aesthetics
(ProQuest document ID: 2410468732)
Abstract: The proliferation in recent years of photography of urban ruins has proven polarizing: on the one hand, urbex photographers claim the status of art for their work; on the other hand, critics and members of local communities consider such photographs to be voyeuristic and exploitative. Hence the term, “ruin porn.” This dissertation draws together insights from art history, philosophical aesthetics, and theological aesthetics to frame photographs of post-industrial ruins as artistic expressions of the sensory experience of dereliction in the built environment. Using a theological construct of “significant human experience,” this dissertation demonstrates that photographs of modern ruins which communicate such should not be dismissed as “ruin porn,” but merit serious consideration as works of art.

Bodega Storefronts and the Iconography of the Post-Pandemic City External
An article by Camilo J. Vergara on bodega storefronts and the iconography of the pandemic city, including his photographs. Vergara has been documenting some US cities, especially NYC, during the pandemic whose photographs are stored at the LIbrary's Prints & Photographs Divisoin.
Camilo J. Vergara’s Photographs of African American Communities in America’s Cities
A Picture This blog introducing Vergara's photos of African American communities in America's cities (June 11, 2020).
Camilo José Vergara: Tracking Time External
A website showing images in time sequence, which Vergara photographed and documented for more than four decades.
Museum of the Street: On the work of Camilo José Vergara External
An interview with Camilo José Vergar by Cynthia Davidson.
Our Second Covid Christmas External
An article on Camilo Vergara's documenting cities during the pandemic, including NYC and Detroit.
The World Trade Centers in an Evolving Skyline
A Picture This blog on Vergara's time-lapse series of the World Trade Center (September 8, 2016).

Items from the Collection were featured in the following exhibitions.

Commemorating 9/11: Photographs by Camilo José Vergara
An exhibition at the National Building Museum from September 3 – November 27, 2016.
Detroit Is No Dry Bones: Photographs by Camilo José Vergara External
An exhibition at the National Building Museum from September 30, 2012 – March 17, 2013.
Documenting Crossroad: Survival And Rememeberance Under the Pandemic External
An online exhibition at the National Building Museum.
Documenting Crossroads: The Coronavirus In Poor, MIinority Communities External
An online exhibition at the National Building Museum from.
The New American Ghetto: Photographs by Camilo José Vergara
An exhibition at the National Building Museum from January 26 – May 5, 1996.
Storefront Churches: Photographs by Camilo José Vergara
An exhibition at the National Building Museum from June 20 – November 29, 2009.
The Towers of The WTC: 51 Years of Photographs by Camiro José Vergara External
An exhibition at the National Building Museum from September 4, 2021 – March 6, 2022.
Twin Towers Remembered: Photographs by Camilo José Vergara
An exhibition at the National Building Museum from November 10, 2001 – March 10, 2002.

Tracking Time: Twin Towers & Motor City
Camilo Jose Vergara, who has spent a career photographing the evolution of poor, minority neighborhoods in New York, Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana and California, discusses his work concerning two of these locales: lower Manhattan and Detroit (Event date: November 1, 2016).

Architecture, Design and Engineering Collections in the Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division

Prints & Photographs: Ask a Librarian

Photographer Archives

Fischer (Sigurd) Collection (1921-1966)

Gottscho-Schleisner Collection (1896-1970, bulk 1935-1955)

Hedrich-Blessing Photographs with signatures by architects who designed the buildings (1937-2000)

Highsmith (Carol M.) Archive (1980-)

Horydczak (Theodor) Photograph Collection (1915-1955, bulk ca. 1920-ca. 1950)

Johnston (Frances B.) Photograph Collection (1913-1940)

Korab (Balthazar) Photographic Archive (1950-2011, bulk 1970-2000)

Lincoln (Fay S.) Architectural Photographs (1915-1959)

McGrath (Norman) Photograph Collection (1960-)

Peyser and Patzig Architectural Photography of New York City (ca. 1900-ca. 1920)

Tebbs (Robert W.) Collection (1917-1942)

Trager (Philip) Photograph Archive (1968-2008)

Underhill Collection (first half of the 20th century)

Vergara (Camilo J.) Photograph Collection (from 1970s-)