Berenice Abbott
New York at Night
Photography
The FJJMA's photography collection celebrates the history of the medium. The collection was precociously begun in 1937, when Oscar Jacobson, the museum's director, acquired for the fledgling museum three photographs by Edward Weston. In 1942, Jacobson added to this nucleus two more photographs by Weston.
The period of most rapid growth for the photography collection was the 1970s and early 1980s, during the directorship of Sam Olkinetzky, with the particular guidance of Edwin J. "Jim" Deighton, then the museum's assistant director and, himself, a photographer. During this time, prices were affordable because the market for photography was still nascent, and important examples by major photographers from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were acquired.
The collection has grown to almost thirteen hundred prints. Particular strengths include 26 vintage photographs by Berenice Abbott and 27 by W. Eugene Smith. Recently, the FJJMA Museum Association has given prints by Michael Kenna, while well-known photography collectors Richard and Ellen Sandor of Chicago have donated vintage works by Bill Brandt, Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Edward S. Curtis, André Kertész, W. Eugene Smith, and James VanDerZee, Garry Winogrand, and others.


Ansel Adams
Aspen, New Mexico

Lewis Baltz
Pasadena

Felix Bonfils
Temple of Jupiter, Baalbek

Manuel Alvarez Bravo
The Daydream

Robert Capa
A Scene from Konstantine Simonov’s play “The Russian Question”

William Clift
Sheep & Petroglyphs, Canyon del Muerto, Arizona

Edward Weston
Artichoke, Halved

Berenice Abbott
Christopher Street Shop

Emilio Amero
Fourteen Year Old Mother

Thomas F. Barrow
From the series Cancellations

Bill Brandt
Charlie Brown’s East End London Pub

Harry Callahan
Weed Against Sky

Paul Caponigro
Enchanted Mesa, Acoma, New Mexico

Edward S. Curtis
The Vanishing Race

Garry Winogrand
Untitled #17 (from Women are Beautiful portfolio)

Berenice Abbott
Edward Hopper

Eugene Atget
Street Paver

Cecil Beaton
Portrait

Brassai (Gyula Halaz)
Kiki and Her Accordion Player at Cabaret des Fleurs, Montparnesse Boulevard, Paris

Harry Callahan
Eleanor, Chicago

Henri Cartier-Bresson
China

André Kertész
Piet Mondrian, Paris