Photography

Our collection spans the entire history of the medium, with a focus on 19th-century American and European photography.

Highlights

Self-Portrait of Josiah Johnson Hawes in a Fanciful Alpine Setting, ca. 1850

Albert Sands Southworth
Untitled [first image from the 605 O'Farrell Street section of the album Home (605 O'Farrell Street, San Francisco and Heartsease, Menlo Park)], 1880

Eadweard Muybridge
Salt Lake City and the Tabernacle, Utah, 1873-1874

Carleton E. Watkins
Magnolia Blossom, 1925 (printed 1930)

Imogen Cunningham
Lewis Powell (Alias Payne), Conspirator, Seated and Manacled, April, 1865, from the book, The Album of the Lincoln Conspiracy (Washington: Alexander Gardner, 1866), 1865

Alexander Gardner
Sir Walter Scott's Monument, Edinburgh, proof for pl. 2 of the book Sun Pictures in Scotland (published 1845), 1844

William Henry Fox Talbot
Aspidium Achrosticoides (America), ca. 1850

Anna Atkins
Seated Odalisque, 1858

Roger Fenton
Hardinge Hay Cameron, 1864

Julia Margaret Cameron

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Stories

Jose deniz in the Paul McCartney Photographs 1963–64: Eyes of the Storm exhibition at the de Young

Jose deniz in the Paul McCartney Photographs 1963–64: Eyes of the Storm exhibition at the de Young

Beatlemania in the Bay

Bay Area fans on seeing the Beatles live in San Francisco and what the band means to them.

By Debra Baker, Jose Deniz, and Laure Mandin

About the photography collection

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