occasionally must be removed from their archival
context to facilitate forms of ‘‘quotation’’ such as
copying, scanning, or public display.
Groups of photographs whose ‘‘original order’’ is
deemed not meaningful or absent altogether can be
rearranged for the convenience of the archivists and
their patrons. This situation often occurs when the
original owners or creators of the photographs
failed to recognize significant relationships among
them or simply never devised a useful filing system.
Archivists also deal with materials that are not
‘‘archives’’ in the sense of representing organic orga-
nizational records. Such aggregations, often broadly
called ‘‘manuscript collections,’’ regardless of the
precise content, frequently can be rearranged with-
out loss of contextual information. Indeed, many
such collections are acquired by archival organiza-
tions whose mission is to collect relevant research
materials according to specified guidelines from a
variety of collectors and sources. Some ‘‘archives’’
are hybrid organizations, fulfilling several distinc-
tive missions. The archives of the Art Institute of
Chicago, which hold the business records of the Art
Institute, also collect the papers of artists—often
including photographs—as well as miscellaneous
research materials from a variety of sources.
Archival organizational structures vary widely.
Some archival collections are found in libraries,
which may or may not include administratively
separate archival sub-units. The so-called ‘‘special
collections’’ of many libraries often include man-
uscript collections and photographic files, and col-
lections that are managed in accordance with
archival traditions. University libraries typically
hold such ‘‘special collections,’’ usually including
photographic materials.
Archives range in size and scope from the files
generated by a small business or an individual pro-
fessional person (such as a photographer) to the
vast holdings of governmental units. The National
Archives and Records Administration of the Uni-
ted States preserves the records generated by the
many official agencies of the U.S. government. The
Still Picture unit of the Special Media Archives
Services Division, located in College Park, Mary-
land, contains millions of photographs, which are
made available to serious researchers. The National
Archives is perhaps the quintessential archival
repository, which helps to set archival standards
for the entire profession. The Library of Congress,
a separate government entity, is not merely a gigan-
tic library but is a hybrid organization that includes
collections of documents that are managed accord-
ing to archival principles. It serves as a highly influ-
ential creator of descriptive standards. Its Machine
Readable Cataloguing (MARC) format for catalo-
guing databases is employed internationally for the
cataloguing of books, and has been adapted for the
description of archival materials such as photo-
graphic collections, at both group and item levels.
Museums have tended to avoid the MARC format
because of its library orientation.Photographers’ Archives
The life’s work of a photographer, containing a
variety of forms and media, such as original nega-
tives, transparencies, prints, and professional and
personal papers, is often called an archive. A few
organizations, most notably the Center for Creative
Photography (CCP) at the University of Arizona in
Tucson, actively acquire selected photographers’
archives, most through donation. Photographer,
curator, and educator Harold Jones was the found-
ing Director of the CCP (1975–1977). The CCP
holds more archives and individual works by twen-
tieth-century North American photographers than
any other museum in the nation. These holdings
include a research collection featuring the archives
of over 60 photographers—Ansel Adams, Richard
Avedon, Lola Alvarez Bravo, Louise Dahl-Wolfe,
Robert Heinecken, W. Eugene Smith, and Edward
Weston among them. Archives include photo-
graphs, negatives, albums, work prints, manu-
scripts, audio-visual material, contact sheets,
correspondence, and memorabilia and have re-
cently been mined as a resource for specialized
publications that contextualize photographers’
careers within their archives.
Other universities, libraries, historical societies at
the regional, state, and municipal levels, and some
museums also collect photographers’ archives on a
limited basis, often because the photographer was
an alumnus or former teacher or the work matches
a preexisting collection strength. The archives of
documentary photographer David Plowden, who
attended Yale, is now in the collections of Yale
University, for example. Laura Gilpin, famous for
her views of the west, has her archive at the Amon
Carter Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, known for
its Western U.S. collections. Amon Carter also
holds Eliot Porter’s archives.
Because a photographer’s archive can necessitate
a heavy investment of space, budget, and staff
involvement for processing and preservation, non-
profit historical organizations must be highly selec-
tive and are understandably wary of large acquisi-
tions. Art museums, normally devoted to issues such
as connoisseurship and the acquisition and manage-ARCHIVES