National Photo Company collection
Scope and Content Note
The National Photo Company Collection documents virtually all aspects of Washington, D.C., life. During the administrations of Presidents Wilson, Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover, the National Photo Company supplied photographs of current news events in Washington, D.C., as a daily service to its subscribers. It also prepared sets of pictures on popular subjects and undertook special photographic assignments for local businesses and government agencies. The images date between ca. 1850 and 1945; the bulk of the images were created between 1909 and 1932. The photographic files of the National Photo Company, including an estimated 80,000 images (photographic prints and corresponding glass negatives), were acquired by the Library from its proprietor Herbert E. French in 1947. Most images are captioned. Many photographic prints are annotated with the number of the corresponding glass negative.
Available online are the glass negatives, a selection of about 1,900 photographic prints for which copy negatives exist, and images digitized on demand in response to researchers' purchase of reproductions or Library of Congress special projects. The scanned photographic prints represent a small cross-section of the entire corpus of photographic prints, which include individual prints grouped in LOTs, and prints presented in chronological albums covering events of the period 1919 to 1930 and thematic groups of photographs on the four presidents, inaugurations, sports, landmarks, conventions, and topics of local interest.
For more information about the entire collection and browse digitized images, refer to the Collection Profile: National Photo Company Collection.
Dates
- Creation: 1850-1945
- Creation: Majority of material found within 1909-1932
Language of Materials
Collection material in English
Access Restrictions
The National Photo Company collection is open to research. Negatives are generally not served to researchers and are stored offsite.
Many photographic prints are annotated with the number of the corresponding glass negative. Some of the original negatives have deteriorated over the years, however, and cannot be successfully printed.
Requesting Materials
For information about service in the Prints and Photographs Reading Room, including obtaining copies, see "Information for Researchers."
Rights Restrictions
No known restrictions on publication. For full information see "Rights and Restrictions Information" for the National Photo Company Collection.
Biographical Note/Organizational Note
Herbert E. French (1883-ca. 1950) was a reporter for Bradstreet Company when he bought the National Photo Company in 1912, adding to the company's resources his own stock of negatives dating back to about 1909. The National Photo Company operated as a news service to newspapers, news distributors, and other photo agencies, including Acme, Wide World, the Newspaper Enterprise Association (NEA), the Central Press Association (Cleveland, Ohio), the Washington Star, the New York Times, and the U.S. Daily. In addition, the National Photo Company provided advertising services to various clients, including the local Chamber of Commerce, and prepared photographically illustrated promotional brochures for commercial, fraternal, and service organizations. Herbert French's business correspondence indicates that he instructed his photographers to go after exclusives, that is, subjects not covered by crowds of other news photographers. He supplemented their output by purchasing photographs from other photographers and news agencies on a regular basis. The company's Washington, D.C., offices were located at 815 H Street NW in its earliest years, then moved to 1212 G Street NW, and finally to 923 F Street NW, where it closed after falling victim to the Depression. French continued his work as a commercial photographer from his home address, 227 Nichols Avenue SE.
Extent
40,000 photographic prints (ca) : gelatin silver ; various sizes.
40,000 negatives (ca) : glass, and some safety film ; from 4 x 5 in. to 8 x 10 in.
Abstract
The National Photo Company Collection documents virtually all aspects of Washington, D.C., life, including inaugurations, sports, landmarks, conventions, and topics of local interest. During the administrations of Presidents Wilson, Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover, the National Photo Company supplied photographs of current news events in Washington, D.C., as a daily service to its subscribers. Herbert French, the National Photo Company owner and a photographer himself, was a member of the White House News Photographers at the time of its founding. He covered the administrations of Presidents Taft, Wilson, Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover. His collection of portraits includes many prominent officials and social figures. Visitors to the capital, protests and parades, conventions and meetings, events in Congress, inaugurations and White House events, and to a limited extent, world events in general are represented in the collection. Herbert French was particularly fond of baseball, and the Washington Senators are documented thoroughly, especially in years when they were the contenders for the pennant. Similarly he covered horse shows and automobile racing.
Arrangement
The collection is primarily arranged into 46 groups (LOTs). Some materials have also been incorporated into the browsing files in the Prints and Photographs Reading Room.
The collection is organized in 4 series: albums, photographic prints, browsing files, and negatives. The albums are LOTs 12281 to 12299 and they are largely arranged chronologically but some are by subject. The loose unmounted photographic prints are grouped thematically in LOTs 12337 to 12368. Many of the thematic LOTs have subdivisions based on subject.
Some mounted photographic prints can also be found in the division's self-indexing browsing files including the Biographical File (BIOG FILE), Presidential File (PRES FILE), U.S. Geographical File (U.S. GEOG FILE), and Specific Subject File (SSF). Negatives are generally not served to researchers and are stored offsite.
- Albums
- LOT 12281 (H): Woodrow Wilson
- LOT 12282 (H): Warren G. Harding
- LOT 12283 (H): Calvin Coolidge
- LOT 12284 (H): Herbert Hoover
- LOT 12285 (H): Inaugurations, 1909-1929
- LOT 12286 (H): Disarmament conference, Nov. 1922, and burial of the Unknown Soldier
- LOT 12287 (H): Washington Nationals baseball club
- LOT 12288 (H): Grand Army of the Republic
- LOT 12289 (H): Horse shows
- LOT 12290 (H): White House photographers
- LOT 12291 (H): Shrine convention, June 5, 6, 7, 1923
- LOT 12292 (H): Layouts
- LOT 12293 (H): Washington, D.C., September 1919 to December 1921
- LOT 12294 (H): Washington, D.C., 1922
- LOT 12295 (H): Washington, D.C., January 1923 to January 1924
- LOT 12296 (H): Washington, D.C., 1924
- LOT 12297 (H): Washington, D.C., January 1925 to January 1926
- LOT 12298 (H): Washington, D.C., 1926
- LOT 12299 (H): Washington, D.C., January 1927 to February 1930
- Photographic Prints
- LOT 12337 (F): National Photo Company - Native Americans and Eskimos (Inuit), 1909-1932
- LOT 12338 (G): Autographed portraits of dignitaries and celebrities
- LOT 12339 (F): Museum objects and activities
- LOT 12340 (F): United States presidents and first ladies
- LOT 12341 (F): People in Washington, D.C., and New York
- LOT 12342 (F): Social life and recreation in the Washington, D.C. area
- LOT 12343 (H): The Fuzzy Focus
- LOT 12344 (F): Sports activities in the Washington, D.C. area
- LOT 12345 (F): Columbus story
- LOT 12346 (F): Sulphur industry in the Andes
- LOT 12347 (F): Independence story
- LOT 12348 (F): Poor Richard's Almanacks illustrations
- LOT 12349 (F): Foreign views
- LOT 12350 (F): Transportation
- LOT 12351 (F) (H): Government and politics
- LOT 12352 (F): United States views
- LOT 12353 (F): Business and industry
- LOT 12354 (F): Events in the Washington, D.C. area
- LOT 12355 (F): Occupations and services
- LOT 12356 (F): United States government departments and Civil Service
- LOT 12357 (F): Washington, D.C., views and outdoor sites
- LOT 12358 (F): United States military and World War I
- LOT 12359 (F): Architecture in the Washington, D.C., region
- LOT 12362 (F): Portraits
- LOT 12366 (F): Ben Franklin
- LOT 12367 (F): Abraham Lincoln, miscellaneous
- LOT 12368 (F): George Washington in engravings and paintings
- Browsing Files
- Negatives
Additional Guides
A set of catalog records describing digitized items is available through the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting.
The original card indexes of the National Photo Company list by subject the 73,500 glass plate negatives which French donated to complement the captioned photographic prints purchased by the Library. The Library may not hold items for all negative numbers in the card index.
Catalog Record
Provenance
Gift and purchase, from Herbert E. French; 1947.
Online Content
To see already digitized images from this collection, search our Online Catalog by call number or descriptive words.
Alternate Formats
Negatives are generally not served to researchers and are stored offsite. Generally a print of each image is available in the collection. The negatives are arranged into filing series by media type and size. Within each filing series negatives are arranged in original negative number order which, for the most part, is chronological. Due to safety regulations, nitrate negatives cannot be served to the public.
| If code begins with: | It is a: |
|---|---|
| Glass | |
| LC-F8- | 4x5 glass negative |
| LC-F81- | 5x7 glass negative |
| Nitrate Film | |
| LC-F8122 | 5x7 nitrate film |
| LC-F82- | 8x10 nitrate film or glass negative |
| LC-F8211- | 5x7 nitrate film negative |
| LC-F8314- | 8x10 safety film negative |
| LC-F8324- | 8x10 nitrate film |
| Safety Film | |
| LC-F811- | 5x7 safety film negative |
| LC-F8112- | 5x7 safety film negative |
| LC-F83- | 8x10 safety film negative |
| Duplicate Negatives and Interpositives* | |
| LC-F801- | 8x10 safety film copy negative |
| LC-F81-T- | 8x10 polyester film interpositive |
| LC-F81-T01- | 8x10 polyester duplicate film negative |
| LC-F8314-T- | 8x10 film interpositive |
| LC-F8314-T01- | 8x10 duplicate film negative |
*Interpositive transparencies (code T) and duplicate negatives (code 01 or T01) were largely created as preservation copies by the Library of Congress Duplication Services Division and/or a Library contract with Chicago Albumen Works.
Bibliography
- Guide to the Special Collections of Prints and Photographs in the Library of Congress / compiled by Paul Vanderbilt. Washington, D.C. : 1955, no. 534 (Available in the Prints and Photographs Reading Room and online through HathiTrust)
- Special Collections in the Library of Congress / compiled by Annette Melville. Washington, D.C. : Library of Congress, 1980, no. 170. (Available in the Prints and Photographs Reading Room and online through HathiTrust)
- Washingtoniana : photographs : collections in the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress / Kathleen Collins. Washington : The Library, 1989. (Available in the Prints and Photographs Reading Room and online through HathiTrust)
Note
Terminology in collection materials and descriptions may include negative stereotypes or words some may consider offensive. The Library includes historic captions because they can be important for understanding the context in which the images were created. Content of the images themselves and transcribed language in online records do not reflect the views of the Library of Congress. For questions or to provide more information about this material, please contact Prints and Photographs Division staff through our Ask a Librarian service.
Note
For more information about the entire collection, refer to the Collection Profile: National Photo Company Collection.
Processing History
The National Photo Company collection was processed by Prints and Photographs staff. This finding aid contains unverified data from old container lists transcribed by Gillian Mahoney, Tori Cox, Nick Pernot, Michelle An, and Erin Ebert in 2020. Finding aid encoded by Emma Esperon in 2021. Not all of the groups of material are described at the same level of detail.
Additional materials that form the National Photo Company collection not included in this finding aid is the Photo album of U.S. Capitol Interiors (Call No.: Unprocessed in PR 06 CN 1037). For more information about service of these additional materials, search our Online Catalog by call number.
Source
- National Photo Company, photographer (Creator, Organization)
- French, Herbert E., 1883-ca. 1950, collector (Collector, Person)
Subject
- National Photo Company, photographer. (Organization)
Genre / Form
Geographic
Topical
- Celebrities--1900-1940.
- City & town life--Washington (D.C.)--1900-1940.
- Politics & government--Washington (D.C.)--1900-1940.
- Presidents--United States--1900-1940.
- Sports--1900-1940.
- World War, 1914-1918.
Uniform Title
- Title
- National Photo Company collection
- Author
- Prepared by the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress
- Date
- 2021
- Language of description
- English
- Script of description
- Latin
Part of the Prints & Photographs Division Repository
Prints & Photographs Reading Room
101 Independence Ave, SE
James Madison Building, LM 337
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