national treasure

Roger Fenton
Moscow, Domes of Churches in the Kremlin, 1852



In December 1948, when Georgia O'Keeffe was deciding where to place the largest and most significant collection of photographs by her late husband, the seminal American photographer Alfred Stieglitz, she visited the National Gallery of Art. Astutely observing both small details as well as the larger symbolic importance of the still relatively new museum, she wrote to a friend a few days later, "as you probably know, [the Gallery] hasn't a speck of dust anywhere," and she noted, "Stieglitz worked for the recognition of photography as a fine art—the National Gallery means something in relation to that." The museum, she concluded, "seems like a peak—something finished—standing alone." One year later, O'Keeffe and the Alfred Stieglitz Estate donated 1,311 works by Stieglitz, an auspicious beginning for the collection of photography at the Gallery.


Bill Brandt
Street Scene, London, 1936


William Henry Fox Talbot
The Boulevards of Paris, 1843


John Moran
The Wissahickon Creek near Philadelphia, c. 1865


Francis Frith
The Ramasseum of El-Kurneh, Thebes, First View, c. 1857


Eugène Atget
Etang de Corot, Ville-d'Avray, c. 1900



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