The museum’s photography collection has particular strengths in documentary and street photography from the 1960s and ‘70s, including work by Robert Frank, Helen Levitt, Garry Winogrand, Diane Arbus, and Lee Friedlander, among others. It also holds examples by the progenitors of this tradition, including Walker Evans, Weegee, Eugene Atget, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Aaron Siskind, Lewis Hine, Berenice Abbott, and Lisette Model. Through a gift by the artist and later his widow, the museum has 62 prints by Nathan Lerner. His abstract, experimental approach offers substantive historical and conceptual links to the museum’s strengths in abstract painting and works on paper. Similarly, the abstract photography of Carlotta Corpron links well with recent acquisitions of photographs by Barbara Morgan and Herbert Matter, complementing the museum’s strengths in mid-century abstraction. In addition to these strengths, the museum has important holdings in the history of photography, including works by August Sander, Eadweard Muybridge, Julia Margaret Cameron, Edward Weston, Imogen Cunningham, Ansel Adams, Edward Steichen, and Alfred Stieglitz, among others.

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Collection Highlights

black and white photograph of a man leaping across a wide puddle

Untitled (Jumping man)

Henri Cartier-Bresson
Strand of seaweed forming a loop like a lower-case “d” on a sandy background

Seaweed 2

Aaron Siskind
title

New York at Night

Berenice Abbott
title

Lower East Side, NY

Lisette Model
title

Brown's Face

Nathan Lerner
title

Light Follows Form

Carlotta M. Corpron
title

A Dirigible

Alfred Stieglitz