Three prestigious Washington, D.C. organizations played a major role in the establishment and acceptance of art photography in America. The Camera Club of the Capital Bicycle Club sponsored the 1896 Washington Salon and Art Photographic Exhibition. The Cosmos Club provided the exhibit space. And fifty of the salon's images were purchased to expand the Smithsonian Institution's national collection. National Museum of American History.

Presents a wide-ranging selection of photographs from the Smithsonian American Art Museum collection, including Civil War images by George Barnard and the Mathew Brady Studio, spectacular western landscapes by Timothy O'Sullivan and William Henry Jackson, as well as Pictorialist scenes by Clarence White and Gertrude Kasebier, from approximately 1839 to 1939.

To reveal the truth within the landscape, photographers of the present day have had to find a way to mediate between the sometimes harsh realities of contemporary life and the edenic traditions of the genre -- between home and heaven. Featuring 90 works by 39 artists, along with illustrated essays by Merry Foresta, Stephen Jay Gould, and Karal Ann Marling.

Approaching photography and photographer literally as a "medium," this exhibition considers how historical and present-day practitioners utilize and reference intrinsic mechanics of light-sensitive media to achieve spiritual allusions and illusions. Photographic Resource Center at Boston University.

An online exhibit from the New York Public Library that compares the 19th-century chromolithographs of astronomical observations made by artist/astronomer Etienne Trouvelot with comparable images photographed by NASA as part of its space program.

A contemporary view of history from the from the photography collections at the Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe, Princeton University Art Museum, and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

The Museum began to collect photographs in 1930 and established the Photography Department in 1940. Site links to MoMA's virtual group and one-person exhibitions, including Rudy Burkhardt, Andreas Gursky, Aleksandr Rodchenko, David Goldblatt, and Cindy Sherman.

Recollecting a Culture is a study of the political and economic pressures on the visual arts of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). It draws from the Fotokino Archive, comprised of approximately 14,000 prints and several thousand negatives, which was accessioned by the Staatliche Galerie Moritzburg Halle, Germany, following reunification. Photographic Resource Center at Boston University.

In 1853, explorer John C. Frémont led an expedition from Missouri to California in an attempt to locate a route for the proposed transcontinental railway. Tragically, the work of the expedition's original photographer, Solomon Nunes Carvalho, was lost to fire not long after the trek's culmination. In this exhibition, Robert Shlaerre traced Frémont's route, recapturing the journey using one of the most beautiful and demanding of all photographic processes: the daguerreotype. Amon Carter Museum.

A virtual exhibition of photographs, contemporary interpretations and historical texts, and Real Audio tours, from the photographic collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Exhibition curated by Merry Foresta.

The exhibition represents multiple approaches to history, material culture and time. Photographs by William Notman (1826-1891), re-visited and re-photographed by contemporary photographer Andrzej Maciejewski, with separate historical, photographic, and museological commentary. McCord Museum of Canadian History. [Flash and QuickTime required]