The UCR/California Museum of Photography (CMP) is an off-campus institution and department of the College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences at the University of California, Riverside, California, USA. The collections of UCR/CMP form the largest, most comprehensive holding of any photographic collection in the Western half of the United States. The growing UCR/CMP collections encompass a wide array of photographic arts, history, and technology.

Collections overview

The collections are organized into four interlinked areas.

Bingham Technology Collection

The Bingham Technology Collection has grown from the original gift of 2,000 vintage cameras donated by Dr. Robert Bingham in 1973 to a current count of 10,000 cameras, viewing devices, and photographic apparatus. In 1975, ''

Popular Photography ''Popular Photography'', formerly known as ''Popular Photography & Imaging'', also called ''Pop Photo'', is a monthly American consumer website and former magazine that at one time had the largest circulation of any imaging magazine, with an edit ...

'' declared that UCR's Bingham Camera Collection was second only to the

George Eastman House The George Eastman Museum, also referred to as ''George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film'', the world's oldest museum dedicated to photography and one of the world's oldest film archives, opened to the public in 1949 in ...

Collection in Rochester, New York, and the collection of the

Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Founded ...

. The collection holds four synoptic subsets of camera technology: The Kibbey

Zeiss-Ikon Carl Zeiss AG (), branded as ZEISS, is a German manufacturer of optical systems and optoelectronics, founded in Jena, Germany in 1846 by optician Carl Zeiss. Together with Ernst Abbe (joined 1866) and Otto Schott (joined 1884) he laid the f ...

Collection; Curtis

Polaroid Polaroid may refer to: * Polaroid Corporation, an American company known for its instant film and cameras * Polaroid camera, a brand of instant camera formerly produced by Polaroid Corporation * Polaroid film, instant film, and photographs * Polar ...

Collection; Wodinsky Ihagee-Exakta Collection and the Teague Kodak Brownie Collection. Other significant artifacts include a Louis daguerre camera, a

Simon Wing Simon Wing (1826 –1910) was a daguerreotypist and camera inventor and socialist politician. He is best remembered as the first candidate of the Socialist Labor Party of America for President of the United States, running for that office in 1892 ...

multi-lens

wet plate The collodion process is an early photographic process. The collodion process, mostly synonymous with the "collodion wet plate process", requires the photographic material to be coated, sensitized, exposed, and developed within the span of about ...

camera, a fully functioning Caille Bros. Cail-O-Scope, and a Ponti megalethoscope. As the most complete and actively used camera collection in the western states, this resource is highly valued by photography scholars, other museums, film/video producers, book/magazine publishers, regional schools, and photo clubs.

University Print Collection

The University Print Collection was founded in 1979 when several community patrons purchased a remarkable collection of photographic master prints from

Friends of Photography Friends of Photography was a nonprofit organization started by Ansel Adams and others in 1967 to promote photography as a fine art. During its existence the organization held at least 330 photography exhibitions at its galleries in Carmel and San F ...

. Currently, the collection exceeds 20,000 images that were created by over 1,000 photographers, including 7,000 Ansel Adams negatives. The University Print Collection includes quantities of vintage daguerreotypes, 1840s calotype negatives, Civil War era ambrotypes, and commercial

tintype A tintype, also known as a melainotype or ferrotype, is a photograph made by creating a direct positive on a thin sheet of metal coated with a dark lacquer or enamel and used as the support for the photographic emulsion. Tintypes enjoyed their ...

s as well as images from popular culture (1840s–present). A major subset of the University Print Collection is the Keystone-Mast Collection, which comprises over 250,000 original stereoscopic negatives and 100,000 paper prints. The original glass and film negatives form a vital primary record of worldwide social, cultural, industrial, agricultural historicity between 1860 and 1950. The visual online catalogs of the Keystone-Mast Collection have been available on the UCR/CMP website since 2001. A

National Endowment for the Humanities The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is an independent federal agency of the U.S. government, established by thNational Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965(), dedicated to supporting research, education, preserv ...

(NEH) Preservation and Access Grant primarily funded these online catalogs. Additional funding, by

Institute for Museum and Library Services The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) is an independent agency of the United States federal government established in 1996. It is the main source of federal support for libraries and museums within the United States, having the ...

(IMLS), supports the MOAC project to create catalogs served on the

California Digital Library The California Digital Library (CDL) was founded by the University of California in 1997. Under the leadership of then UC President Richard C. Atkinson, the CDL's original mission was to forge a better system for scholarly information management a ...

UCR/CMP Study Center Library

UCR/CMP Study Center Library and Roy McJunkin Imaging Center are interlinked research areas containing 10,000 photography monographs, manuscript materials, artists books, technical literature, exhibition catalogs, salon annuals and runs of photography periodicals, a copy stand, plus a full complement of expanding computer technology. International scholars, the education communities, and the museum staff utilize these research areas.

Digital Virtual Collection

The Digital Virtual Collection is the digitized content of the museum’s collection. Since 1994 when the Museum first went online, UCR/CMP has added over 13,000 pages of content that include over 400 themed micro-sites and 9 major finding aids. Ongoing grants and initiatives have enabled the museum to continue work on the website and allowed for continued digitization of artifacts found in the museums collections.

References

External links

UCR/California Museum of Photography

California Digital Library
{{DEFAULTSORT:UCR California Museum of Photography Museum of Photography Photo archives in the United States Museums in Riverside, California Photography museums and galleries in the United States Art museums and galleries in California Photographic technology museums University museums in California