Photographers’ archives and paper collections, reflect the diverse development of photographic media from the 1840s to the present day. Nineteenth-century holdings encompass family papers relating to the British photographer, Julia Margaret Cameron, recounting her life in colonial Ceylon (Sri Lanka), as well as the Gilberto Ferrez collection comprising nearly 2,000 photographs from the oeuvre of Brazilian photographer, Marc Ferrez, and his contemporaries whose photography offers important insights into the forging of Brazilian modernity. Turn-of-the-century collections include those of Edward S. Curtis, who devoted much of his life to documenting the activities of Native Americans, including manuscripts relating to his major publications, multimedia lecture presentations, and his early romanticized feature film, In the Land of the Headhunters (1914).
The collections include an impressive selection of papers relating to major European modernist photographers and editors such as El Lissitzky, Jan and Edith Tschichold, the Hungarian-born photographer and picture editor Stefan Lorant, and Albert Renger-Patzsch. Holdings of modernist American photographers comprise the papers of the advertising photographer, Paul Outerbridge, and three collections of correspondence and documentation relating to Man Ray, including letters from other Dada and Surrealist artists. Papers and oral history materials relate to the Los Angeles-based documentary photographer, Edmund Teske, including his work for Frank Lloyd Wright, and for Paul Strand’s anti-fascist film company, Frontier Films.
Finally, the GRI houses a number of collections by significant post-war photographers. These incorporate the Californian artists, Allan Sekula and Lewis Baltz, both key figures in the history of late modernism, as well as Jerry McMillan and Charles Brittin who documented the LA art scene in addition to Brittin’s important record of civil rights protests in LA and the American South. Other American photographers’ archives comprising an extensive body of artworks and papers, include those of Marie Cosindas and Robert Mapplethorpe. Recently, the archive of the German conceptual photographer Ursula Schulz-Dornburg was donated by the artist. Many of these archives are complemented by related vintage prints held in the collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum.
Image: Robert Mapplethorpe (American, 1946-1989). Untitled. 1972. Acrylic on canvas board. Getty Research Institute, 2011.M.20.302. Gift of The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation to The J. Paul Getty Trust and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. © Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Used by permission.