587
as D.O. Hill, Robert Adamson, Julia Margaret Cameron,
Roger Fenton, Lewis Carroll, Henry Peach Robinson,
Peter Henry Emerson, Paul Martin and Alvin Langdon
Coburn—not to mention the rediscovery of Joseph
Nicéphore Niépce’s fi rst photograph in 1952.
Their labors and careers did not just begin and end
with the process of acquisitions. The Gernsheims backed
up their collection-building with scrupulous and massive
original research, careful scholarship, public lectures
and teaching, and a variety of advocacy and enterprises
that eventually became international in scope. Not con-
tent to merely discover works and artists and to add them
to their holdings, they also began to actively publish their
fi ndings. In the course of their eighteen years of produc-
tivity they authored more than 200 articles and nearly
two dozen books from their collection. The publications
ranged from picture books of Helmut’s photographs to
important scholarly monographs on such individuals
as Carroll, Cameron and Fenton. In order to help their
own fi nances and make the collection self-sustaining
they also authored and edited general picture books on
such fi gures as Queen Victoria, King Edward & Queen
Alexandra, and Winston Churchill, as well as providing
illustrations from their collection for a large number of
magazine and book publishers of the time. Their classic
History of Photography, fi rst published in 1955, grew
out of their passion for historical British photography
but became more massive and international in scope with
each newer edition and in tandem with the expanding
parameters of their own collection’s growth.
Besides utilizing publications, they also based their
advocacy for expanding the word about photography’s
signifi cance as a major art form through a variety of
traveling exhibitions. Beginning with their newsmaking
exhibition, Masterpieces of Victorian Photography, at
the Festival of Britain in 1951, they learned the value of
bringing the original art to the public. This was followed
in 1952 with their expanded show, A Century of Pho-
tography, held at the World Exhibition of Photography
in Lucerne, which also fi rst revealed the international
and modernist expansions that the Gernsheim Collection
had begun to undertake. Between 1956 and 1961 the
collection would be featured in eight massive European
venues (each with its own catalogue as well) that served
to spread the word about the artistic and cultural heritage
of photography and its history.
Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s the Gern-
sheims also struggled to fi nd an institutional home
for themselves and their collection. Building up the
collection while making a living through publications,
print sales and exhibitions was an exhaustive process,
and the couple tried in vain to fi nd an organization or
museum that would help them share the burden while
also allowing them the independence to continue add-
ing to their world-renowned holdings. At least three
dozen groups—ranging from UNESCO to the cities of
Cologne and Gothenburg—were approached and aban-
doned. In 1963 a private investment scheme brought the
Gernsheims and their collection to Detroit, Michigan,
USA, but the plan fell apart. In the summer of 1963 the
Gernsheims accepted an offer from The University of
Texas at Austin and sold the collection, together with
their research library, correspondence, research fi les and
archives, for $300,000. (They also sold a much smaller
selection of all their duplicate prints to the Moderna
Museet in Stockholm.) Rather than accompanying the
archive, however, they elected to receive the funds over
a period of six years and retired to Lugano,Switzerland,
in 1965.
In “retirement” the Gernsheims continued to update
and edit their publications and travel the world. Alison
was injured in a fall on a South American trip in 1969
and died as a result of surgical complications afterwards.
Helmut remarried in 1970 and began to take a renewed
interest once more in photohistorical advocacy, educa-
tion and scholarship. In the remaining twenty-fi ve years
of his life he began building another collection—this
time of contemporary photography with an international
range—as well as writing more books and starting to
rewrite and enlarge his massive History once more.
He maintained a large volume of correspondence and,
throughout the 1970s and 1980s taught at a number
of universities and workshops in Switzerland, Britain,
France and most especially the United States. In 1984 he
arranged a traveling retrospective exhibition of his own
photography—his fi rst in nearly 40 years—so that a new
generation could rediscover his own artistry. Finally, in
1995 after completing an exhibition from his new col-
lection, he died of a heart attack in Lugano.
His widow sold his new library, collection of contem-
porary photographs and remaining papers to the Reiss-
Engelhorn Museum in Mannheim, Germany. Between
this fi nal deposit and the two existing collections in
Austin, Texas, and Stockholm, Sweden, the Gernsheims
remain the only photohistorians who are represented by
having collections/archives in three major institutions
around the world.
Roy FlukingerBiography
Helmut Gernsheim was born in Munich, Germany, on
March 1, 1913. An inveterate collector in his youth, he
studied art history and graduated from the Bavarian State
School of Photography in 1937. He fl ed Nazism that year
and immigrated to London, England where he became
a commercial photographer. He met Alison Eames, a
native Londoner, who was born on February 10, 1911
and, following a middle-class British upbringing, was
pursuing a clerical career. Separated by Helmut’s alien