Photographs
The Kansas Collection contains over a million photographic images. These visual resources provide researchers with a unique opportunity to study the life and character of Kansas and the region. While a single photograph may provide a great deal of information about its individual subject, collectively photographs can provide a whole gamut of information on the social history of the time and place.
The photographs in the Kansas Collection cover a great number of subjects relevant to the history of our state and region, and to life in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Subject strengths include small town and farming life, architecture, Native Americans, railroading, the African American experience, and women at home and at work.
The Collection includes both the work of professional photographers and the casual snapshots taken by amateur enthusiasts who recorded family activities, trips, and special events for the family album. The Collection is also a source for the study of many different types of photographs, reflecting the development of photography from daguerreotypes and ambrotypes to modern day negatives and prints.
Photographs are delicate objects which require special care and handling. Especially sensitive to sunlight and fluorescent lighting, they need to be stored in the dark in a cool, dry environment. The emulsion layer (the side that contains the image) must be protected from rough handling. Even fingerprints can be damaging to photographs since oils from the skin can attack the emulsion, and accordingly staff and library patrons alike handle all photographs with white cotton gloves.
Most photographs are supported by some form of wood, paper, cardboard, or other material, each of them subject to chemical breakdown, causing degradation or destruction of the image. Negatives pose a range of preservation problems depending on the materials of which they are composed. Glass negatives are subject to breakage, especially if stored without due attention to their weight and fragility. Diacetate film is unstable because the backing shrinks, causing the emulsion to buckle and separate. Nitrate-based film self-destructs due to inherent chemical instability.
The photographs included in this section of the exhibit have been chosen to illustrate some of the different subjects and physical forms available for use in the Kansas Collection.
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12. This photograph is one of approximately 4,000 in a collection documenting the construction of Union Station in Kansas City. The station, built between 1910 and 1914 in beaux arts style, was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972. It is second only to Grand Central in size in the United States. Also included in the collection are architectural plans and drawings, and business and engineering records relating to the construction and operation of the station and its surrounding complex of viaducts and tracks.
When the collection was acquired, an early review of its contents indicated that approximately 1,500 nitrate negatives urgently needed preservation attention. With the generous support of the donor, The Kansas City Terminal Railway Company, the Kansas Collection was able to have all the nitrate negatives copied onto a more stable modern negative base, thus avoiding serious deterioration problems in the future.
The particular image on display exhibits much wear along the edges. When not on display it, like all the other images in the Collection, is stored vertically in a pH neutral folder.
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13. Rock salt was first discovered in Reno County, Kansas, in 1887, and within a year ten salt plants were in operation around Hutchinson. The Hutchinson-Kansas Salt Company was formed by the consolidation of two earlier companies in 1899. This photographic print is in good condition, but the mount, typical of its time, is highly acidic.
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14. Chief Red Cloud was a member of the Snake family, born in 1822 at the forks of the Platte River, Nebraska, and rose to power through his own ability. He was prominently involved in plains warfare and was one of the chiefs who signed a peace treaty with the U.S. government in 1868.
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15a and 15b. Stereographic views were produced from the early 1850s to the late 1930s by commercial and amateur photographers. Each card was made up of two almost identical images placed side by side. When viewed through a stereoscope the image appeared to be three-dimensional. This form of entertainment became extremely popular and stereoscopes, both hand-held and cabinet styles, were to be found in many homes and libraries.
The subjects of stereographic views were often tourist attractions or exotic, faraway places. In 1867 Alexander Gardner followed the westward progress of railway construction by photographing along the Union Pacific route, and marketing the views as part of the "Across the Continent on the Union Pacific Railway" series.
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16. This view of an Osage camp is a part of a small collection of photographs collected by Daniel B. Dyer, an Indian Agent at the Quapaw Indian Agency from 1881 to 1884, and later at the Cheyenne and Arapaho Agency in Darlington, Oklahoma.
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17. The Kansas City Monarchs were a prominent African American baseball team: many Monarchs, including such greats as Satchel Paige and Ernie Banks, went on to play in the major leagues. This photograph is from the papers of Thomas Y. Baird, owner of the team for many years. The collection is made up of photographs, scouting reports, player sales information, travel records, and correspondence, mainly from 1948 to 1956.
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18a, 18b, 18c and 18d. In 1950 the Libraries acquired a major collection of 30,000 glass negatives that represented the life work of a professional photographer from Junction City, Kansas, Joseph J. Pennell. The images in the collection provide an excellent view of what life was like in a Midwestern town at the turn of the century, and documents its transition from the "horse and buggy days" to a more modern period. They show Junction City businesses, street scenes, events, agriculture, leisure activities such as picnics and parties, formal portraits of individuals, all manner of images of people at work and at home, and military life at nearby Fort Riley.
Glass was widely used for photographic negatives from the 1850s until well into the 20th century, for both studio and outdoor photography. Until a dry plate process was developed in 1879 photographers wishing to make photographs outside their studios had to travel with chemicals, glass plates, and a darkroom tent, in order to coat, sensitize, expose, and develop the image while the plate was wet.
Photographs 18a,18b and 18c were printed from glass negatives in the collection. 18d has lost a corner, with the effect seen in the corresponding contact print. Fortunately this break did not seriously affect the image. Broken plates can frequently be carefully fitted back together and sandwiched between two other sheets of glass to preserve the image.
In 1983 the Kansas Collection received funds from the National Endowment for the Humanities to preserve and provide increased access to the Pennell Collection. While previous efforts had been made to print and catalog the more significant images, far more needed to be done. With the support of the grant the entire collection was surveyed and described. Surface dust was removed, and all the plates were placed in acid-free envelopes and filed vertically in boxes that give both support and separation. A further selection of images was printed, and all the cataloged copy prints were microfilmed. The microfilm allows researchers either at the University or elsewhere to gain an overview of the contents of the Pennell Collection without unnecessary wear and tear on the prints.
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19. The first fully successful photographic process was the daguerreotype, introduced in 1839. It involved producing a laterally reversed positive image on a copper plate with a mirror-like surface of highly polished silver. The ambrotype developed slightly later as an application of the wet collodion process introduced by Frederick Scott Archer in 1851. It employed a less expensive method than the daguerreotype, and was produced by underexposing a glass plate coated with collodion emulsion in the camera, resulting in a fainter than usual negative image. Backing the glass with black paper, cloth, or metal gave a positive-appearing image. Ambrotypes were frequently hand-colored, and, like both daguerreotypes and tintypes, were customarily put into decorative hinged cases, made of wood covered in leather or embossed paper. Ambrotypes were most popular in the mid 1850s although they continued to be produced until the early 1880s.
The ambrotype shown is of Sara Tappan Doolittle Robinson, wife of the first Governor of the state of Kansas. Born in Massachusetts in 1827, Sara married Charles Robinson in 1851. The Robinsons became involved in the Free-State effort to settle the new territory of Kansas, and moved to the site of Lawrence in September of 1854. In 1856 she published a book, Kansas, Its Interior and Exterior Life, about the struggle for freedom in Kansas.
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20. The tintype was even cheaper to produce than the ambrotype and was used from just before the Civil War until the early years of the 20th century. It was a direct positive image produced by the wet collodion process, on a base of thin sheet iron ("tin" The tintype was even cheaper to produce than the ambrotype and was used from just before the Civil War until the early years of the 20th century. It was a direct positive image produced by the wet collodion process, on a base of thin sheet iron ("tin"). Tintypes were sometimes put up in cases like those used for daguerreotypes and ambrotypes but, needing little protection, were also distributed in paper mounts and albums, or even left loose, making them convenient to mail to family and friends.
While tintypes were more durable than ambrotypes, many that have survived carry scratches, rust stains, and dents. Most were studio portraits; the tintype shown here is unusual in showing an exterior scene. It is a mirror image like the daguerreotype and the ambrotype (although an ambrotype image could be corrected by reversing the glass in its mount): note the reverse lettering over the door of the building: A.S. Howard 1882.
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21a. Post card photograph, Mt. Ayr Congregational Church, Mt. Ayr, Iowa, 1877.
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21b. Construction of St. Rose School, Crofton, Nebraska. Postcard mailed May 2, 1911 to Miss Dora Hunter.
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21c. Envelope for postcard stock manufactured by Ansco Company, Binghamton, NY. (Lent by James Helyar for physical exhibit; items not available for digitization at time of the creation of this online exhibit.)
The three items above are included to illustrate the extensive use made of photographic postcards during the early part of the twentieth century. Gradually, as advances in photography were made, picture taking became simpler and more feasible for the average person to pursue. In 1902 the Eastman Kodak Company produced postcard-size photographic paper on which images could be printed directly from negatives, and competing companies soon developed as the paper stock became popular. This led to an enormous proliferation of photographic postcards, made up of studio portraits made by professional photographers and pictures by amateur photographers (both intended for personal use), and postcards published commercially.
All manner of subjects were featured.. Views of towns, new buildings, disasters such as floods, fires, and tornadoes, and events such as the circus coming to town or 4th of July parades were all popular subjects. They are important today for the visual information they provide about the past.
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22. Exaggeration postcard "potatoes grow big in Kansas." photographer W.H. Martin, 1908.
The exaggeration or tall-tale postcard, depicting larger-than-life crops, animals, insects, etc., became a popular fashion in postcards in the early twentieth century. W.H. "Dad" Martin was an outstanding exponent of the genre. He moved to Ottawa, Kansas, from Maple City at the age of twenty-one, and bought a photographic studio from E.H. Corwin in 1894. By 1908 he was producing postcards depicting exaggerated views, and was so successful that he sold the studio in 1909 to devote his full attention to publishing them from his Martin Post Card Company.
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23. Photographic print, Neighborhood children jumping rope, Leavenworth, Kansas, ca. 1905, Frank Morrow, photographer.
Frank Morrow lived in Leavenworth, Kansas from 1885 until his death in 1936. Although not employed as a professional photographer, he spent much time photographing the Leavenworth community.
This print is made from a glass plate negative, and is from a large collection of negatives donated to the Kansas Collection by the Leavenworth Public Library.