About the Collections

The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, was one of the earliest museums in the country to collect photography, initiated in 1924 when Alfred Stieglitz donated twenty-seven of his photographs. Other strengths of the collection include daguerreotype portraits by Southworth and Hawes; sublime landscapes of the American West; turn of the century Pictorialist photographs; European and Central European photography from between the wars, including a large collection of photographs by Josef Sudek; and the recently acquired archival collections of celebrity portraits by Yousuf Karsh and Herb Ritts and mountain photographs by Bradford Washburn

Collections Highlights