THE PERMANENT COLLECTION

The Museum of Photographic Arts Schwartz Gallery

The collection of the Museum of Photographic Arts encompasses the full spectrum of the photographic medium, as well as materials and documents related to the history and process of these art forms. Since its beginnings in 1983, MoPA has maintained an archive of such materials as an important adjunct to its exhibition and education programs and a singular asset for the community. This reflects its curatorial tenet that "although art objects are carefully preserved within the museum space, the collection as a whole is held by the public, representing who we are and what we value as a culture."

The collection attempts to trace the entire history of photography: its aesthetic movements and technological advancements. Processes from Daguerreotypes, salt prints, Woodbury types, albumen prints, ambrotypes and tintypes, through such contemporary processes as 20 X 24" Polaroid photographs and laser holograms are collected for their aesthetics and their importance to the historical periods of their derivation. The collection is strong in its Daguerrian holdings as well as mid-twentieth century Soviet Russian photography. And while the entire collection illustrates the complex and varied history of the medium, its major areas of strength are in modern and contemporary work, specifically in social documentary photography and photojournalism.

Contemporary color and black-and-white photographs—many by artists the museum has exhibited—are actively collected from all over the world to keep pace with this very vigorous period of production. A small selection of videotapes and films are also held in the collection.

The museum's collection reflects the central role photography plays in our image-based culture, both as an expressive medium and as a documentary record. Holdings currently include 7,000 photographs that span the history of photography. This includes:

19th century works by Matthew Brady, Jeremiah Gurney, Julia Margaret Cameron, Hill & Adamson and expeditionary photographers Francis Frith, Samuel Bourne and John Thomson.

Early 20th century holdings by Alfred Stieglitz, Clarence White, Edward Steichen, Eugene Atget, Alvin Langdon Coburn, Paul Strand, Richard Throssel, Peter Henry Emerson and Lewis Hine. World War II and Depression-era images are well represented by such artists as Berenice Abbott, Weegee, Lisette Model, Dorothea Lange, Arthur Rothstein, Horace Bristol, André Kertész, Henri Cartier-Bresson, August Sander, Ben Shahn and photomontage work by John Heartfield.

The collection also represents a number of Latin-American artists, including Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Lazaro Blanco-Fuentes, Mario Cravo Neto, Graciela Iturbide, Alberto Korda, Miguel Rio Branco, Sebastião Salgado, Rafael Serrano, Flor Garduño and Mariana Yampolsky.

Social documentary and photojournalism are also well represented with images by W. Eugene Smith, Margaret Bourke-White, Susan Meiselas, Alex Webb, Charles Moore, Max Alpert, Ivan Shagin, Georgi Zelma, James Nachtwey, and Max Yavno. In recent years more than 274 rare and important documentary images from the Stalinist-era USSR were acquired, including works by Russian Constructivist Alexander Rodchenko. This collection of Russian material is unmatched anywhere in the U.S. save the Getty Museum in Los Angeles and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Contemporary works, especially post-World War II American photography, constitute the strongest area of the permanent collection with works by Ansel Adams, Wynn Bullock, Harry Callahan, Eileen Cowin, Edward Burtynsky, James Fee, Joan Myers, Andrea Modica, Roy DeCarava, Robert Heinecken, Birney Imes, Danny Lyon, Sally Mann, Joel Meyerowitz, Duane Michals, Irving Penn, Aaron Siskind, Lou Stoumen, Patrick Nagatani, Mark Klett, Abelardo Morell, Len Jenshel, Judith Golden, Arnold Newman, Larry Clark and Garry Winogrand.

Significant recent additions to MoPA's collection include 15 camera lucida drawings by Sir John Herschel, 44 platinum/paladium prints by Joan Myers from the exhibition Whispered Silences, Japanese American Detention Camps, Fifty Years Later; over 100 photographs from Nagasaki Journey, by Yosuke Yamahata, documenting the devastation of August, 1945; and 30 photographs by James Fee and 59 by his father, Russell Fee from the artist's Peleliu Project and 20 photographs from his America Series.

All the works in the museum's collection are housed, maintained and conserved in a state-of-the-art humidity and temperature controlled cold storage vault. Periodic exhibitions are assembled from the collection. Requests are accepted for short period loans to museums or university galleries, if conditions of transport, care, insurance, and proper crediting are observed. With advance reservations, serious scholars may make arrangements to view specific holdings from the collection in the museum's library.

 

Photographs from MoPA's Permanent Collection