Photography

The Brooklyn Museum is proud to have been home to the country’s first school of photography. In the decades since, the Museum has assembled a wide-ranging Photography collection. The foundational interests—European works, 19th-century travel photography, and 20th-century American imagery—are now complemented by a significant collection of images by important Latin American and contemporary photographers. Most recently, the Museum has acquired a great number of photographs that reflect the institution’s broad scope and its commitment to engage diverse communities.

Highlights

Explore the Photography collection

History

The first school of photography in the United States opened at the Brooklyn Institute, a precursor to the Brooklyn Museum, in 1889. Exhibitions of photography began in 1891, and the institution began collecting photographs out of those exhibitions in 1899.

Early collecting emphasized the work of the late Pictorialists, such as Adolf Fassbender, D. J. Ruzicka, and Max Thorek. A few notable exceptions included acquisitions by Margaret Bourke-White, Youssef Karsh, Gjon Milli, Arnold Newman, Edward Steichen, and Edward Weston, and a full set of Berenice Abbott’s Changing New York.

Later in the 20th century, attention turned to images of life in the United States by photographers such as Consuelo Kanaga, as well as the work of Latin American photographers such as Graciela Iturbide. More recently, acquisitions of contemporary photography have increased dramatically. The collection now represents all genres of work, including street photography, abstraction, portraits, landscapes, and conceptual photography.