Photography

Photography

The photography collection at Princeton is one of the leading museum collections in the country. The first photograph in the collection, a work by Alfred Stieglitz, was registered in 1949. In 1971, David Hunter McAlpin, Class of 1920, and Mrs. McAlpin donated their personal collection of nearly 500 photographs, including works by Ansel Adams, Wynn Bullock, Imogen Cunningham, Charles Sheeler, and Edward Weston. Since then the department's holdings have grown to over 20,000 photographs by more than 900 artists, forming a comprehensive history of the medium from the 1840s to the present. Archives housed in the department include those of Minor White, Clarence H. White and the Clarence H. White School of Photography, Ruth Bernhard, and William B. Dyer. Photography at Princeton, an extensive catalogue of the collection, was published in 1998. The collection is available to students and scholars  through exhibition or viewing in the study room by appointment.

McAlpin Photo Study Center hours are by appointment only. Please send an email to Photography@princeton.edu at least two weeks in advance to view original photographs. All appointment requests must be made in writing.

Katherine A. Bussard

Peter C. Bunnell Curator of Photography

Katherine A. Bussard was appointed Peter C. Bunnell Curator of Photography at the Princeton University Art Museum in 2013. She holds a PhD from the City University of New York and had previously served as associate curator of photography at the Art Institute of Chicago. Her books include So the Story Goes: Photographs by Tina Barney, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Nan Goldin, Sally Mann, and Larry Sultan (2006); Color Rush: American Color Photography from Stieglitz to Sherman (2013); and Unfamiliar Streets: The Photographs of Richard Avedon, Charles Moore, Martha Rosler, and Philip-Lorca diCorcia (2014). Bussard is the coauthor of an award-winning publication exploring the intersection of photography, architecture, and urban studies, The City Lost and Found: Capturing New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, 1960–1980Her most recent exhibition, Life Magazine and the Power of Photography, an award-winning publication, draws on unprecedented access to the magazine’s picture and paper archives to shed new light on the collaborative process behind many now-iconic images and photo-essays.