Photographers

A to Z

• Albert Bierstadt

  1830–1902

  Bierstadt painted the western mountains in a Rome studio and sent the canvases on tour. The light was the advertisement.

  3 prints

• Charles M. Russell

  1864–1926

  Russell worked as a cowboy in Montana for eleven years before he painted full time. The saloon, the camp, and the hunt in this line come from that life.

  4 prints

• Documerica

  1972–1977

  Documerica was the Environmental Protection Agency’s photograph of ordinary American places. Luquillo Beach, 1973, is one frame from that file, now at the National Archives.

  1 prints

• Edward S. Curtis

  1868–1952

  Curtis spent decades on The North American Indian. Canyon de Chelly, with seven Diné riders, and the portrait of Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt (Chief Joseph) are from that work.

  2 prints

• Esther Bubley

  1921–1998

  Esther Bubley rode Greyhound buses for the Office of War Information. She photographed the passengers who stayed on, and the dog a man put off.

  1 prints

• Frank Tenney Johnson

  1874–1939

  Johnson had been a cowpuncher. He painted riders in a low dusk light. The Pony Express here is from 1924, long after the eighteen-month mail service had ended.

  1 prints

• Frederic Remington

  1861–1909

  Remington spent a short stretch on a Kansas ranch, then made the action pictures magazines wanted of the West. The late nocturnes are the quieter ones.

  3 prints

• George Catlin

  1796–1872

  Catlin painted Plains leaders in the 1830s, including Stu-mick-o-súcks, a Kainai chief, at Fort Union. He called that portrait one of his best.

  1 prints

• Gottscho-Schleisner

  1914–1980

  Samuel Gottscho and William Schleisner photographed buildings for the people who built them. In 1955 they made the Fontainebleau in Miami Beach, pool and tower, before the glass doubled.

  2 prints

• Harris & Ewing

  1905–1945

  Harris & Ewing was Washington’s picture bureau. Between the senators they also kept the stray cat, the goat cart, and the stenographer who took dictation in a shower.

  15 prints

• Howard Hollem

  1910–1949

  Howard Hollem photographed the Navy’s training fields for the Office of War Information. At Corpus Christi he caught mechanics laughing at a story the caption never finished.

  1 prints

• Jack Delano

  1914–1997

  Jack Delano photographed a small-town Fourth of July beauty contest in Salisbury, Maryland, then turned around and photographed the people watching it.

  2 prints

• L.A. Huffman

  1854–1931

  Huffman was the photographer at Fort Keogh. He kept a record of Montana as the buffalo range became cattle range, hauling a glass-plate camera across the Big Dry.

  1 prints

• Marion Post Wolcott

  1910–1990

  Marion Post Wolcott had a dry eye for signs. In New Orleans she stopped for a costume shop whose painted promise was larger than any costume inside.

  1 prints

• Russell Lee

  1903–1986

  Russell Lee worked for the Farm Security Administration with a patient eye for crowds. At a San Angelo rodeo he turned away from the arena and caught one man laughing. At the Pie Town fair in 1940 he photographed the rodeo itself, and the calves driven in for roping.

  4 prints

• Solomon D. Butcher

  1856–1927

  Butcher photographed homesteaders in Custer County, Nebraska, lined up outside sod houses with the possessions they wanted in the picture.

  1 prints

• Thomas Moran

  1837–1926

  Moran’s sketches from the 1871 Hayden survey were part of the case for Yellowstone. He signed some later work TYM, Thomas Yellowstone Moran.

  1 prints

• Timothy O'Sullivan

  1840–1882

  O'Sullivan photographed the Civil War, then the Wheeler survey west of the hundredth meridian. In 1873 he took a darkroom wagon to the head of Canyon de Chelly.

  1 prints

• Toni Frissell

  1907–1988

  Toni Frissell left the fashion studio for beaches, pools, and boats, and gave her archive to the Library of Congress. The leisure prints here are the ones that were not magazine assignments.

  12 prints

• Walker Evans

  1903–1975

  Walker Evans is known for the stern portraits of Alabama. In the summer of 1938 he also stood on 61st Street and photographed the children between the avenues.

  1 prints

• William Henry Jackson

  1843–1942

  Jackson photographed the West for the surveys and later for the Detroit Publishing Company. The unrestored view of Mission San Juan Capistrano is one of those plates.

  1 prints