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Photography Collection at Georgetown University Library

This guide provides an overview of the genres, artists and categories of original fine art photographs in the art collection holdings of the Booth Family Center for Special Collections

Genre Scenes

Black and white photograph by Peter Henry Emerson of three men walking on the shoreline of a marsh. They are laborers carrying tools over their shoulders.Peter Henry Emerson (British, 1856 - 1936) Emerson was a pioneering member of the Camera Club of London, and promoted photography as an art form. Influenced by naturalistic French painting of the time he was known for taking photographs that displayed natural settings with working class people engaged in everyday activities. The four images in the collection are plates from his first book, Life and Landscape on the Norfolk Broads (1886).

Figure Studies

Black and white photograph by Gaudenzio Marconi of a nude woman, standing and facing right, arms extended.Gaudenzio Marconi (Italian, 1841 - 1885) Marconi was an Italian photographer who worked in France. He sold académies (photographic figure studies) to students at the École des Beaux-Arts (School of Fine Arts) in Paris. Accomplished artists and students often sketched the figure from photographs, as life models were very costly to employ. The poses were generally based on statues of classical antiquity and the Renaissance. Marconi's photographs were used by famous artists such as Auguste Rodin.

Portraits

Black and white photograph by Hill and Adamson showing a seated man wearing glasses facing three quarters to right, hands in lap.Hill and Adamson (Scottish, active 1843 - 1847) David Octavius Hill (1802 - 1870) and Robert Adamson (Scottish, 1821 - 1848) Hill was a prominent Scottish painter of landscapes and Adamson was a young photographer/ entrepreneur who was preparing to set up the first calotype studio in Edinburgh when they were introduced by Sir David Brewster of Saint Andrews University. They embarked upon a project to photograph a group of some 155 land owning ministers who elected to split from the Church of Scotland to establish the Free Church of Scotland in 1843. Their continued collaboration produced around 3,000 photographs over the next four and a half years and their output is considered "among the highest achievement of photographic portraiture."[i]

[i] Daniel, Malcolm. “David Octavius Hill (1802–1870) and Robert Adamson (1821–1848).” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/hlad/hd_hlad.htm (October 2004)

Black and white daguerreotype by Jesse Whitehurst of a seated man facing viewer. Right arm raised and resting on a table.Jesse Harrison Whitehurst (American, 1850 - 1869) Whitehurst was a successful daguerreotype photographer about whom little is known. He worked in the mid-Atlantic region, including Virginia and Washington, D.C., and died in Baltimore. It depicts T. Meredith Jenkins, S.J., who attended Georgetown College and gave the money to build the Astronomical Observatory on campus. This portrait is housed in the University Archives. 

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