Image: Koch & Wilz (French, active 1850s-1860s). View of Paris towards Notre Dame. Ca. 1864-1872. Albumen print. Getty Research Institute, 2016.R.14-26r.
GRI photography of Europe coalesces across a number of research specialisms, including the architecture and archaeology of the Mediterranean basin that incorporates a number of large study collections relating to the ancient world (see Photography and Archeology), a collection of photographs documenting Europe’s international expositions from the 1850s to the 1930s, and a growing body of photographic material relating to Eastern Europe under dictatorship in the twentieth century, as well as materials that link to the GRI’s wider design and architectural holdings. Additionally, the GRI has gathered collections of figures who are central to European histories of photography, including the art historian Heinrich Schwarz, the picture editor Stefan Lorant, and the photographers Julia Margaret Cameron, Albert Renger-Patzsch, Franz Roh, and Ursula Schulz-Dornburg.
In connection to its wider architectural holdings, important photographic resources document two key art schools in the history of modernism, namely the Dessau Bauhaus and the Soviet design school, VKhUTEMAS. Photographic material of major European architects is contained within the archive of Lucien Hervé, Le Corbusier’s official photographer, numbering over 18,000 items, and in the papers of the Polish-born architect, Daniel Libeskind. Other significant holdings encompass a collection of Italian futurist photographs; objects documenting the industry of photography, including the inventory books for the nineteenth-century Berlin photography firm Heinrich Graf; and items relating to the growth of fascism in Europe. These include a body of press photographs documenting Mussolini’s official activities, and an album by a German photojournalist, Roman Stempka, recording his experience with the Nationalists during the Spanish Civil War.
A growing body of material relates to photography in Eastern Europe, most notably the Michael and Carol Simon Collection of Hungarian Photography, documenting the history of the medium between the 1850s and 1990s. Photography from East Germany comprises a selection of samizdat artist’s books and multiples such as Leussow-Recycling, photographic portfolios Foto-Anschlag and Konzeptionelle Fotografie, and the urban landscapes of Ullrich Wüst.