The Photographic Collection
The photographic collection at the Museum of Fine Arts now boasts more than 16,000 photographic items that span the history of the medium, including everything from mid-nineteenth century daguerreotypes by Mathew Brady and John Jabez Edwin Mayall to contemporary prints by Andres Serrano, Carrie Mae Weems, and Cindy Sherman.
Above: Edouard Denis Baldus (French, 1820-1882), PANORAMA OF PARIS, c. 1852, Albumen print, Gift of The Stuart Society in honor of Alan Du Bois, MFA Assistant Director, 1985.40
Notable photographers in the collection
- Berenice Abbott
- Ansel Adams
- Max Alpert
- Diane Arbus
- Eugène Atget
- Richard Avedon
- Platt D. Babbitt
- Édouard Baldus
- Lewis Baltz
- Antonio Beato
- Ilse Bing
- Félix Bonfils
- Margaret Bourke-White
- Matthew Brady
- Brassaï
- Manuel Àlvarez Bravo
- Julia Margaret Cameron
- Robert Capa
- Étienne Carjat
- Henri Cartier-Bresson
- Lucien Clergue
- Alvin Langdon Coburn
- Edward S. Curtis
- F. Holland Day
- Robert Doisneau
- George Dureau
- Jessica Eaton
- Harold Edgerton
- Alfred Eisenstaedt
- Elliot Erwitt
- Walker Evans
- George Henry Fox
- Robert Frank
- Lee Friedlander
- Lewis Hine
- Gertrude Käsebier
- André Kertész
- Dorothea Lange
- Jacques Henri Lartigue
- O. Winston Link
- Herbert List
- Man Ray
- Sally Mann
- Robert Mapplethorpe
- John Jabez Edwin Mayall
- Ralph Eugene Meatyard
- Arno Rafael Minkkinen
- László Moholy-Nagy
- Barbara Morgan
- Eadweard Muybridge
- Nadar
- Barbara Norfleet
- Timothy O’Sullivan
- Irving Penn
- Len Prince
- Robert Rauschenberg
- Oscar Gustave Rejlander
- Willy Ronis
- August Sander
- Napoleon Sarony
- Pascal Sébah
- Andres Serrano
- Rebecca Sexton Larson
- Ben Shahn
- Cindy Sherman
- Stephen Shore
- Lorna Simpson
- Aaron Siskind
- Eugene Smith
- Herb Snitzer
- Edward Steichen
- Alfred Stieglitz
- Paul Strand
- Isaiah West Taber
- William Henry Fox Talbot
- Philip Trager
- Jerry Uelsmann
- David Vestal
- Todd Webb
- Weegee
- Carrie Mae Weems
- William Wegman
- Edward Weston
- Minor White
- Gary Winogrand