Photo History Links

Below, you’ll find a lengthy list of photography history related links, loosely categorized.

General History (not necessarily photo history) Sites:

Timelines:

General Photography History Sites:

  • When They Were Young – A beautiful “retrospective of childhood” exhibit from the Library of Congress
  • History of Stereo Photography – brief and to the point
  • The Commissar Vanishes – Subtitled “The Falsification of Photographs in Stalin’s Russia”
  • Lego Homages – A great deal of silly fun here as someone has created “replicas” of some great historical photographs using Lego building blocks
  • More Lego Homages – So many blocks… so little time.. another photographer’s take on classic images in Lego
  • Museum of Mourning Photography and Memorial Practice – A really fascinating museum site about post-mortem photography and its cultural role
  • The Getty Collection – Photographs from the collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum in L. A.
  • Eugene de Salignac’s New York – Salignac was a municipal worker who took 20,000 photographs of NYC in the early 1900s
  • Old Picture – Not sure who put this site together, but it’s a huge collection of old images, loosely categorized
  • Califormia Museum of Photography – From U.C. Riverside, a really great collection of images
  • Graphics Atlas – Graphics Atlas is an online resource that brings sophisticated print identification to archivists, curators, historians collectors, students and educators
  • Photography Database – provides basic factual information about photographers, public photographic collections, commercial galleries, photographic exhibitions, and citations to the many published sources used to compile biographical, collections, and exhibitions data. The scope is international; the time frame is from the beginnings of photography to contemporary.photographer’s obituaries, new and expanding collections, exhibitions, galleries, reviews, catalogs, and reference literature.
  • Lost And Found Photos – Todd Wemmer’s project on oral and written histories of photographs that were once lost and now are found… or were found but now are lost… really, it’s about how we interact with photographs of our own past. It’s about history. Contribute a story…
  • Gregory Crewdson – A contemporary photographer, given a royal treatment on a website by Aperture
  • Japan Exposures – A great site about Japanese photography. The site publisher is interested in publishing student papers about Japanese photography.
  • Photography Now.net – An international photography directory
  • Capa’s Falling Soldier – Was it faked?
  • Hiroshima – The Lost Photographs – Amazing pictures from after the bomb
  • The Secret Musum of Mankind – Described as: Cannibals. Fakirs. Crime and punishment. Rituals. Slaves, cults and customs. Warriors and weapons. Equestrians and equilibrists. Musicians and mendicants. Dance, dress, undress and body modification. Structures, conveyances, beasts, and more breasts than you can shake a stick at!
  • Bill Jay on Spirit Photography – The late, great Bill Jay on spirit (ghost) photography (PDF)
  • Pix Channel – Amazing interviews with amazing photographers
  • What’s Next? – FOAM’s thoughts on what the future of history might be
  • MadeInPhoto.fr – Wow! An amazing array of work by contemporary and old-master photographers
  • Living American Master Photographers Project – LAMPP is determined to secure and distribute a living document of contemporary master photography in the United States and abroad.
  • Tour of Edinburgh Libraries’ Photo Collections – Wow… amazing stuff and some wonderful videos about 19th C. photographers

Camera Obscura Sites:

  • Camera Obscura – In the dark about the camera obscura? Get exposed to its nuances here
  • Abeldaro Morell – A contemporary photographer who uses the camera obscura
  • Vermeer’s Camera – An interesting support site for a book of the same name; see how the artist who painted “The Girl with the Pearl Earring” used the camera to help him draw
  • Optical Allusions – An article about artist David Hockney’s claims regarding optical devices in early paintings
  • The Looking Glass – Another article (this one from the New Yorker) about Hockney’s research into optical drawing methods
  • How Caravaggio saw in the Dark – An article about how Caravaggio may have used the Camera Obscura

Niepce, Daguerre & Fox Talbot Sites:

Daguerreotype Sites:

Wet-Plate Negative, Albumen Print and Platinum Print Sites:

Muybridge Sites:

Women in Photography Sites:

20th & 21st Century Photographers:


Photography Blogs, Online Magazines and other “news” resources:

Podcasts, class lectures and resources from Jeff Curto