Louisiana State Museum Photography Collections
| african american
photography
New Orleans' most prominent heritage attraction is the Louisiana State Museum, a complex of national landmarks housing thousands of artifacts and works of art reflecting Louisiana's legacy of historic events and cultural diversity. The collection has 43,000 items encompassing daguerreotypes, ambrotypes,
vintage albumen prints, salt paper print, hand colored or enhanced
photographs, tintypes, glass plate negatives, 16mm films and twentieth
century photography |
Louisiana
State Museum since 1911
751 Chartres Street P.O. Box 2448 Tony Lewis Curator of Visual Arts 504-568-8213 |
Quarters,
Evan-Hall Plantation
c. 1880-1920 by George Francois Mugnier
Albumen photograph
George Francois Mugnier- The mass production and availability beginning in the 1880s of dry plate glass negative allowed photographers the flexibility and technology to leave the confines of the portrait studio. George Francois Mugnier seized the opportunity and created a series of a photographs of the people and sites of New Orleans and southern Louisiana during the 1880s to 1920s. The museum has Mugnier’s glass plate negatives and a selection of vintage prints and stereograph cards.
United
States Mint United
States Mint
T.S. Blessing c. 1880s
Albumen stereograph photograph. Rowles Collection
Rowles Steoregraph Photographs- Grant Rowles, an amateur photographer and collector, amassed an impressive collection of 389 stereograph photographs acquired by the museum. This collection of vintage albumen prints of Louisiana date from mid nineteenth century to the early twentieth century. Many of the well known photographers of the day including Samuel T. Blessing, George Francois Mugnier and Theodore Lillenthal are well represented.
John N. Teunisson- As a commercial photographer, John N. Teunisson documented New Orleans at the turn of the century. Four hundred vintage gelatin silver prints by this talented photographer comprise this collection.
Chamber of Commerce- Commissioned by the Chamber of Commerce in 1917, the photographer Covert created a pictorial record of many of the businesses in the warehouse district of New Orleans. These two hundred workplace photographs document the sales and office workers as well as the culturally diverse laborers in the warehouses.
Louisiana Family Collections- The museum has numerous collections of photographs that record several generations of Louisiana families. The largest of these collections are the Ogilvy, Levert, Bush and Carroll families. These collections consist of individual and group portrait photographs in a variety of medias ranging from daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, tintypes and albumen prints, many by Louisiana photographers.
Parlange
Plantation
Parlange Plantation
Robert Tebbs
1926
Gelatin silver print
Gift of Jeanne Tebbs
Robert Tebbs- The prominent New York based architectural photographer, Robert Tebbs traveled to Louisiana in 1926. In a series of two hundred prints, Tebbs documented the existing and often decaying conditions of the plantations homes in southern Louisiana. Many of the plantations photographed such as Belle Grove, have not survived over time. The museum has a selection of Tebbs’ vintage prints and original negatives of Louisiana.
Patio
Royale Patio
Royale
Francis Benjamin Johnston
1938
Gelatin silver print
Gift of Kenneth Gormin
Frances Benjamin Johnston- A collection of signed vintage prints of the famed female photographer, this series represents her work in New Orleans and south Louisiana during the 1930s and 1940s. The photographs are of the French Quarter and Louisiana architecture.
Works Progress Administration- In 1939, unidentified photographers working with the Works Progress Administration (WPA) created a series of photographs of the French Quarter for the Louisiana Division of the Historic American Building Survey (HABS).
Uncle
Earl Skins a Polecat
Uncle Earl Skins a Polecat
Fonville Winans
1940
Gelatin silver print
Theodore Fonville Winans- The Baton Rouge photographer, Fonville Winans traveled the waterways and documented the culture and people of Acadian Louisiana. The Louisiana State Museum recently acquired from his estate a significant collection of Fonville’s art, political and portrait photographs, archival materials relating to his career and his photographic equipment.
Demonstrating
Angle Shots
Wood "Pops" Whitesell
c. 1940s
Gelatin silver print
Joseph Woodson"Pops" Whitesell- Born in Indiana, "Pops" Whitesell arrived in New Orleans as a professional photographer shortly after the first World War. Settling in the French Quarter, Whitesell photographed the artists, writers and photographers who were attracted to the historic area in the 1930s and 1940s..
Achille Simon- The commercial photographer Achille Simon had a studio in New Orleans during the early twentieth century. Largely a portrait photographer, evidence suggests that Simon was hired by the New Orleans Seaman’s Passport Bureau to take identification pictures of seamen aboard the Muntropic and Munarden. The museum has 23,000 of Simon’s glass plate negatives which encompasses his entire career as a photographer as well as a selection of vintage prints.