998
Chiarenza has pointed out, “no one has yet produced
a less biased, more idea-oriented, or more interesting
general history of photographic picture reproduction”
(Colleagues and Friends, 14).
John Szarkowski has aptly contextualized Newhall’s
long and productive career and his infl uence on the study
of photography:
When Beaumont Newhall was beginning his essential
work, the great photographer Brassai did not know the
name of the great photographer Peter Henry Emerson, and
Alfred Stieglitz had not heard of Timothy O’Sullivan. No
coherent sketch of photography’s fi rst century existed...A
half-century later virtually every photographer of ambi-
tion has a reasonably catholic knowledge of the tradition
that he or she is part of, and almost every art historian
understands, at least in theory, that photography is part
of their problem. Such a change was not wrought by one
person, but it is clear that no one person contributed so
much to that change as Beaumont Newhall. (Colleagues
and Friends, p. 41)
Beth Ann GuynnBiography
Beaumont Newhall was born in Lynn, Massachusetts,
on June 22, 1908. His parents were Dr. Herbert William
Newhall (1858–1933), and Alice Lillia Davis Newhall
(1865–1940). He received A.B. and A.M. degrees in
art history from Harvard University, and did further
graduate work at Harvard, the Courtauld Institute of
Art, the University of London, and the Institut d’Art et
d’Archéologie, University of Paris.
Newhall was a lecturer at the Philadelphia Museum
of Art, an assistant in the Department of Decorative Arts
of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the founding li-
brarian at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, before
becoming that museum’s fi rst Curator of Photography in
- In 1948, Beaumont Newhall became the fi rst Cu-
rator of Photography at the George Eastman House and
its Director in 1958, building a signifi cant photography
collection. In 1971 Newhall became Visiting Professor
of Art at the University of New Mexico, where he helped
to establish the fi rst doctoral program in the history of
photography at an American university. Over the years
he also taught at Black Mountain College, University
of Rochester, Rochester Institute of Technology, State
University of New York at Buffalo, and the Salzburg
Seminar in American Studies.
His honors include two Guggenheim fellowships;
Honorary Fellow, Royal Photographic Society of Great;
Corresponding Member, Deutsche Gesellschaft für
Photographie; Fellow of the Photographic Society of
America and recipient of its 1968 Progress Medal; and
the 1970 Culture Prize of the German Photographic
Society.
Newhall wrote over 650 articles and essays. His
books include: History of Photograph from 1839 to the
Present Day, (1949), Masters of Photography (with
Nancy Newhall, 1958), The Daguerreotype in America
(1961), Frederick Evans (1964), Latent Image: The
Discovery of Photography (1967); Airborn Camera:
The World from the Air and Outer Space (1969); and
Photography: Essays and Images. Illustrated Readings
in the History of Photography (1980).
Newhall married Nancy Wynne Parker in 1936.
After Nancy’s death he married Christi Yates in 1975.
Beaumont Newhall died in 1993.
Nancy Wynne Parker Newhall was born in Lynn,
Massachusetts, on December 15, 1908. She graduated
from Smith College in 1930 and studied painting at the
Art Students League, New York, and married Beau-
mont Newhall in 1936. She served as Acting Curator
of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art from
1942–1945, replacing Beaumont who was overseas with
the Army Air Force reconnaissance units.
Nancy Newhall curated photography exhibitions,
wrote articles about photographers, edited and intro-
duced photography books by Ansel Adams, Paul Strand,
Edward Weston, and others, collaborated with Adams
on several books about the American West, including
Death Valley (1954), Yosemite Valley (1959), The Tetons
and Yellowstone (1970), and This is the American Earth
(1960), the fi rst title in the Sierra Club’s exhibit format
series; and P. H. Emerson: the fi ght for photography as
a fi ne art (1975). Eloquent Light (1963), her biography
of Ansel Adams, covered his career from 1902 to 1938;
The Enduring Moment, the second volume of Adams’
biography was unfi nished at the time of her death. With
Minor White, Nancy Newhall founded the photogra-
phy magazine Aperture. She died in 1974, struck by
a falling tree while rafting down the Snake River with
Beaumont.
The papers of Beaumont and Nancy Newhall are held
at the Getty Research Library; the Center for Creative
Photography, University of Tucson; Houghton Library,
Harvard University; and the Marion Center for Photo-
graphic Arts Library, College of Santa Fe, which also
holds the bulk of their personal library.See also: Eastman, George; and Stieglitz, Alfred.Further ReadingBeaumont Newhall. [Rochester, N.Y., George Eastman House,
1971] Compiled by R. Sobieszek, and P.A. Slahucka.
——, Colleagues and Friends. Santa Fe: Museum of Fine Arts,
Museum of New Mexico, 1993. Published in conjunction with
an exhibition at the Museum from Apr. 24–Aug. 31, 1993.
Coke, Van Darren (ed.). One Hundred Years of Photographic
History: Essays in Honor of Beaumont Newhall, Albuquerque:
University of New Mexico Press, 1975.