Photography
Founded on the acquisition of the internationally renowned Gernsheim Collection in 1963, the Ransom Center's photography collection has grown to more than five million prints and negatives, ranging from the earliest photographic trials to the latest contemporary works. The collection's encyclopedic scope makes it one of the world's premier sources for the study of photography and its history.
Nineteenth-century holdings include rare experiments by inventors Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, William Henry Fox Talbot, and Sir John Herschel, and celebrated works by Victorian photographers Hill and Adamson, Julia Margaret Cameron, and Lewis Carroll. Pivotal twentieth-century figures Walker Evans, Edward Weston, and Ansel Adams are well represented, as are influential post-war artists Aaron Siskind, Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Robert Heinecken, and Joan Lyons. LaToya Ruby Frazier, Alison Rossiter, Alejandro Cartagena, and Marco Breuer are just a few of the twenty-first-century artists represented in the ever-expanding collection. Boasting both breadth and depth, the Ransom Center holds the archives of David Douglas Duncan, Elliott Erwitt, Arnold Newman, and Anne Noggle, as well as the New York Journal-American photographic morgue and the New York print library of Magnum Photos, Inc.
Whether you are conducting a broad historical study or analyzing a single work, figure, or process, start your research here.
Contact
Photography Collection
reference@hrc.utexas.edu
From the Blog
Visualizing the Environment: Ansel Adams and His Legacy
Conservation: The Clarkson Stanfield Album
Elegance and Ambition: Hill & Adamson’s Book of 100 Calotypes
Photographer Laura Wilson delves into the lives of writers with stunning portraits
Fellowships awarded to UT-Austin faculty and graduate students
Portfolio of photographs acquired from Dawoud Bey’s Night Coming Tenderly, Black