In 1943, Ansel Adams (1902–1984) documented
the Manzanar War Relocation Center in California
and the Japanese Americans interned there during
World War II. In‘‘Suffering under a Great Injus-
tice’’: Ansel Adams’s Photographs of Japanese-
American Internment at Manzanar, the Prints and
Photographs Division at the Library of Congress
presented on the World Wide Web side-by-side
digital scans of both Adams’s 242 original nega-
tives and his 209 photographic prints, allowing
viewers to observe his darkroom technique and
cropping decisions. Although most of the photo-
graphs are portraits, the images also include daily
life, agriculture, and sports and leisure activities.
Adams donated these prints and original negatives
to the Library between 1965 and 1968. In the
World Wide Web version, the entire collection
appears online for the first time. The online collec-
tion also includes digital images of the first edition
ofBorn Free and Equal, the book Adams based on
his work at Manzanar.
The Panoramic Photograph Collection contains
approximately 4,000 images featuring American
cityscapes, landscapes, and group portraits. These
panoramas offer an overview of the nation, espe-
cially for the early twentieth century when the
panoramic format was at the height of its popular-
ity. Subjects include: agricultural life; beauty con-
tests; disasters; engineering works such as bridges,
canals and dams; fairs and expositions; military and
naval activities, especially during World War I; the
oil industry; schools and college campuses; sports;
and transportation. The images, 1851–1991, cover
all the states and the District of Columbia, plus
some foreign countries and U.S. territories. The
Library’s large collection of panoramas was formed
largely during the late nineteenth and early twenti-
eth centuries, again in consequence of the copyright
privilege. More than 400 photographers are repre-
sented in the collection. Postcards and magazines
reproduced panoramas as advertisements for real
estate and the promotion of the tourist industry.
Panoramic photographs were also popular as
group portrait souvenirs for people attending con-
ventions, conferences, and company events, when
panoramic photographers actively solicited orders
from the large number of participants in such wide-
format group portraits.
The Theodor Horydczak Collection (mid-1920s–
1950s) documents both the architecture and people
of the Washington metropolitan area in the 1920s–
1940s, including streets and neighborhoods and
exteriors and interiors of commercial, residential,
and government buildings and interiors. Washing-
ton events and activities of national import, such as
the 1932 Bonus Army encampment, the 1933
World Series, and World War II preparedness cam-
paigns, are also depicted.
One of the important benefactors of the Prints
and Photographs Division was Angelo A. Rizzuto
(1906–1967), whose gift of his own photographs
was accompanied by a financial gift. Rizzuto had
conducted a major photographic survey of Man-
hattan and planned a publication. In 1969, through
Rizzuto’s bequest, the Library received the working
files for his unfinished book. The 60,000 black-and-
white negatives and photoprints offer a detailed
record of Manhattan from about 1952 to 1966.
The emphasis in Rizzuto’s work is on the vast
scale of the Manhattan cityscape and the complex
interrelationships between people and their envir-
onment. Although he supplied minimal caption
information, the photographer carefully organized
his images chronologically. The collection has not
been cataloged and is not available for use except
by special petition. Division chief Alan Fern
decided to purchase photographs for the collection
with Rizzuto’s fund, and Jerald Maddox used it
judiciously to acquire art photographers’ portfo-
lios. The Rizzuto fund also facilitated the acquisit-
ion of photographs by Roger Fenton.
TheLookCollection includes 3.9 million photo-
graphs, negatives, and color transparencies (repre-
sented by about 10,060 catalog records), ca. 1951–- This material is rich in the documentation of
American and international events and the life-
styles of celebrities, as well as the ‘‘human interest’’
stories of the less than famous, in which the now
defunctLookmagazine specialized.
The Carl Van Vechten Photographs Collection
includes 1,395 photographs, taken from 1932–1964
by this American photographer (1880–1964). The
collection is noted for portraits of celebrities, espe-
cially figures from the Harlem Renaissance. While
the Van Vechten material represents only a portion
of the artist’s total output, the Library also con-
tains some photographers’ complete archives, such
as the Toni Frissell collection, which is notable for
both her significant World War II contribution and
her fashion photography.
Other photographic collections include: the
American Red Cross Collection of 50,000 photo-
graphs and negatives; the 303 glass-plate negatives
among the papers of Orville and Wilbur Wright,
which record their work with flying machines,
donated in 1949; the Abdul-Hamid II Collection,
which portrays the Ottoman Empire during the
reign of one of its last sultans, Abdul-Hamid II,
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS