Photography

Photographs representing a history of the medium from the 1840s to the present

Photography is a growing area of strength for the Palmer Museum of Art. The permanent collection currently includes more than 1,500 photographs (approximately 13% of the collection). These holdings represent the broad history of the medium from its inception to the present day. Early practitioners of the medium represented include Mathew Brady, Samuel Broadbent, Julia Margaret Cameron, Félix Bonfils, André Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri, Alfred A. Hart, William Henry Jackson, and Carleton Watkins, as well as late nineteenth-century Pictorialists Edward Curtis, Peter Henry Emerson, Clarence White, and Eva Watson-Schütze.  

  

The permanent collection includes works by many noted twentieth-century photographers including Berenice Abbott, Margaret Bourke-White, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Carlotta Corpron, Harold Edgerton, Walker Evans, Lewis Hine, Consuelo Kanaga, Barbara Morgan, Gordon Parks, Charles Sheeler, Aaron Siskind, W. Eugene Smith, Edward Steichen, Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand, Karl Struss, and James Van Der Zee. Of special note are a group of some thirty Russian/Soviet photographs; 151 photographs by Andy Warhol (101 Polaroids, 50 gelatin silver); 250+ works by Konrad Cramer; and fifty works by Brett Weston.

  

The Palmer is also dedicated to collecting contemporary photography (both analogue and digital) and has works by Eleanor Antin, Gregory Crewdson, Adam Fuss, Gilbert & George, Steve McCurry (’74), Ana Mendieta, Vik Muniz, Isaac Scott, Cindy Sherman, Yinka Shonibare, Jerry Uelsmann, Kara Walker, Carrie Mae Weems, William Wegman, and Joel-Peter Witkin, among others. Recent acquisitions include digital prints by contemporary photographers Kristin Capp, Ralph Gibson, Walter Iooss, Alen MacWeeney, Joyce Tenneson, and Peter Turnley,