Where does photography stand in today’s art museum? And how did it arrive there? These questions are at the heart of Alexandra Moschovi’s new book, A Gust of Photo-Philia: Photography in the Art Museum.

The San Francisco Museum of Art opened its doors on the top floor of the War Memorial Veterans Building in 1935. A year later, in October 1936, its first Director, Dr. Grace McCann Morley, would write to the Resettlement Administration in Washington D.C. being “anxious” to stage an exhibition of Miss Dorothea Lange’s photographs that were produced only the year before in the context of the Farm Security Administration project.

McKinley began collecting African studio photography while traveling in West Africa in the early 1990s. In the years since, she has built a significant collection, which revolves predominantly around images of African womanhood – the focus of her new book, The African Lookbook: A Visual History of 100 Years of African Women.

China in the 19th century was not an easy place for foreigners to travel with and use their cameras. Reports show that reactions from the native Chinese were unpredictable and ranged from curiosity to downright hostility. Photographers would often feel uncomfortable or threatened when surrounded by large crowds. Resident photographers, however, would be better placed to deal with such situations. They would also know the best places to photograph and how to get there efficiently and safely.

With his name added this image says “I, Moholy, am shaping light with my hands” or “I grasp the light”. The image kind of describes Moholy as “The Maker of Photograms” or “The Master of Photograms” even. - Renate Heyne

Daniel Wolf was one of those giants in photography who played a major role in the development of our profession. Without him and some of our other late co-founders such as Harry Lunn, Cusie Pfeiffer, Stephen Rose, and Tom Halsted, many of us might never have entered this field. Without Danny and the others, there might never have been a field or an AIPAD.

She made collecting things in various fields her life’s work, and saw it as in some way akin to the rewards of having a family, with each member looked after by being carefully preserved and immaculately annotated in her tiny pencil script.

In the summer of 1898, over 500 citizens of 35 Native American nations gathered in present-day North Omaha to participate in the Indian Congress. Some had travelled over 800 miles to get there. The unprecedented convening coincided the Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition, Nebraska's world fair. Over two million fairgoers viewed Expo displays showcasing American agriculture and industry. They also toured Native American encampments and attended Wild West shows, events that entwined anthropology and entertainment. Marking the end of a devastating century of federal policy, fair organisers intended to celebrate the United States' expansion into Indigenous territories.

At some point in her modelling career Antonia accepted to sit for photographers and used as she was to unveiling for painters did not think twice before doing the same in front of the camera. But, as she was soon to learn at her expense, sitting in the nude for a painter who used the excuse of Mythology or of the Bible to represent women in their birthday suit and elevate them to the status of goddesses, nymphs or biblical figures was very different from taking off one’s clothes for a photographer.

The enigmatic figure photographed among the ruins flickers throughout the texts, like a protagonist in a film, somehow connected to the plot, but never fully developed and seen only in disconnected glimpses. He is not mentioned in the introduction to the photographs.

Du Camp’s sense of disorder and disjunction did leave its traces. One such trail appears intermittently throughout the photographs, a cypher that appears, disappears and reappears again in unexpected places. It is in the form of a dark-skinned man, usually clothed in only a white loin cloth and head-wrap, who inhabits many of the images of Egypt.

The bubble was rendered from a design that I sketched on a brown paper bag. It went through a battery of rigging and safety tests and then made its maiden flight in my studio. Simone d’Aillencourt, my favorite model at that time, walked up to the bubble, which was suspended from one of the studio skylights. She studied it, smiled, and remarked, "You’re going to fly it over the Eiffel Tower, yes?" Suppressing a grin, I said, "Maybe." Simone climbed into the bubble and explored the walls of the sphere as if to find a new body language that would express the future in the strange spacecraft.

These picture are subjective, they reflect me, my relationship with the world surrounding me, my vulnerability, my emotions, as well as the people who have collaborated with me. With my photography I took a stand for the Roma people, living on the margins of society.

Brodovitch loved the montages. In fact, he spent the entire class gushing over them. And on the final night of the course, he offered my father his first-ever professional assignment: to illustrate a new work by an emerging young writer, Truman Capote. The work was Breakfast At Tiffany’s.

Travelling for pleasure in the Victorian era was only available to a small wealthy portion of the population and was not without risks. It soon became evident that, thanks to the stereoscope, a large number of people who could not afford the expense of going on a Grand Tour, could at least buy stereo cards of the places they wished to visit.

During the epidemic that took place during the winter of 1910-1911, some 60,000 people were struck down by a pulmonary form of the disease that invariably proved fatal. At its height, in January and February 1911, there was a partial breakdown of social order. Chinese medicine could provide no cure for the plague, and burgeoning discontent weakened social ties in a region where subsistence itself was problematic.

An exceptional archive, original photographs mostly taken by Henry-René d’Allemagne during his various archaeological, ethnographic and artistic expeditions in Persia between 1898 and 1907.

Up to now very little was known about American-born stereo daguerreotypist Warren Thompson and the information we had about him was very scant, so much so that nobody knew when and where he was born or what happened to him after the early 1860s. This article aims at providing never-published-before answers to some aspects of the life of this remarkable photographer, who is mainly known through a fairly small quantity of surviving stereo daguerreotypes which include some staged self-portraits.

On April 22, 1890, citizens of the central Kansas town of McPherson were greeted with a directive in the local paper: “Expression is the key to character. Think of this then have Mrs. Vreeland Whitlock take your picture.” Rosa Vreeland-Whitlock’s penchant for inventive advertisements led to a successful 30-year career as a studio photographer – and earned her a place in Katherine Manthorne’s new book, Women in the Dark: Female Photographers in the US, 1850–1900.

Coming in close succession, major authenticity scandals in 1997 and 1999 involving photographs attributed to Man Ray and Lewis Hine sent a shudder of uncertainty across the collecting community.

A photograph is more than an image. Paper, the physical material of the photographer, plays a vital role in the appearance of a photographic print and in conveying the photographer’s intention for it.

“Mad Romantic” is a term often used in the literature to describe the biographical journey of the extravagant John J. McKendry. Born in 1933 in Canada, McKendry was the Curator of Prints and Photographs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York from 1967 until his brutal death in 1975

On his studio floor or on small stages, Arnold would construct elaborate sets covered in fabric, paper, and found objects such as masks, jewelry, toys, bottle caps, coins, and shells. These repurposed parts proved the value and power of trash, of the discarded and meaningless, made into precious treasure through Arnold’s photography.

It is very important to bear in mind that when she sailed for the Crimea, the name of Florence Nightingale was totally unknown to the general public. Queen Victoria herself had only heard mention of her a few days prior to her departure and knew very little about her.

The chase involved in looking through thousands of amateur photographs in search of those that elicit the same endorphin rush as professional photographers' best work is a challenge of endurance and often a masochistic practice.