The Library includes a small but select body of material related to the collecting of photography, whether through the work of dealers, curators, galleries, or collectors themselves. Most notable are the papers of Harry Lunn, a photography dealer active from the mid-1960s until his death in 1998. Lunn was central to the creation of a market for art photography in the United States, operating galleries first in Washington D.C., and then New York and Paris. He sold works by both historical and contemporary photographers, including Berenice Abbott, Ansel Adams, Eugène Atget, Walker Evans, Robert Frank, and Robert Mapplethorpe. On a smaller scale, the West Coast scene is represented through the records of the Stephen White Gallery, which operated in Los Angeles between 1975 and 1991. Artists shown by White included Ruth Bernhard, Lotte Jacobi, Irving Penn, and W. Eugene Smith.
In relation to the writing of the history of photography, the GRI holds the papers of the Viennese-trained art historian, Heinrich Schwarz, who emigrated to the United States in 1938. Schwarz wrote the first monograph on a photographer, the Scottish artist David Octavius Hill, and gathered extensive research materials on pre-photographic optical devices. Also preserved are the papers of Beaumont and Nancy Newhall, both key figures in the writing of photography history in the United States. Beaumont Newhall was the first Curator of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art, and then George Eastman House. Nancy Newhall published books in collaboration with Paul Strand, Edward Weston, and Ansel Adams. The archive contains material relating to other photographers close to the Newhalls including Alfred Stieglitz and Minor White.
A selection of papers and the postcard collection of Samuel J. Wagstaff Jr., who collected extensively in nineteenth and early-twentieth century French, British, and American photography are held at the GRI (the bulk of his archive is held by the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian). Wagstaff’s collection of photographs was acquired by the J. Paul Getty Museum in 1984.
Image: Wouter Deruytter (Belgian, b. 1967). Harry Lunn reading newspaper at Art Basel, Basel, Switzerland, 1996. Gelatin silver print. Getty Research Institute, 2004.M.17. © Wouter Deruytter.
Image Background: Self Portrait, 1975 © Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Used by permission.
Self Portrait, 1978 © Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Used by permission.
Self Portrait, 1988 © Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Used by permission.