The Photography Collection
The Harn Museum’s Photography collection covers the history of photography from 19th century daguerreotype portraits to 21st-century photographs by key figures from Europe and the U.S. to contemporary images by noted national and international photographers.
A strength of the collection is an in-depth representation of works by Jerry Uelsmann, the innovative experimenter who established the University of Florida as a center for alternative photographic practice from 1960 to 1995. Also featured are his UF photography colleagues from that notable era, Robert Fichter, Evon Streetman, Doug Prince and Todd Walker.
More about the Photography Collection
The Harn’s Photography collection is presently about 2,700 photographs that represent major movements in the history of photography: 19th century portraiture, documentation of the American West, 20th century Pictorialism, Surrealism, Humanist and Street photography, New Topographics and Conceptual photography. Each gives form to the medium’s continually evolving technology in service to personal vision. In part due to Jerry Uelsmann’s legacy, generous gifts and acquisition endowments have been made by donors that ensure the photography collection’s continued growth.
At the founding of the Harn Museum in 1990, approximately 400 photographs from the University of Florida’s University Art Gallery entered the Harn collection. Included were photographs by Robert Frank, Harry Callahan, Irving Penn, Ken Josephson, Robert Rauschenberg, Diane Arbus, Edward Weston and Minor White. Building on these, the collection was strengthened by Miami collector Martin Margulies’s gift of 29 photographs by 13 artists including Charlie White, Paul McCarthy, Olaf Brunning, Catherine Wagner and Todd Hido.
Beginning in 2005, when the first curator of photography was hired, photographers Richard Misrach, Cindy Sherman, Carrie Mae Weems, Mark Klett, Catherine Opie, Nan Goldin, Roni Horn, Sol Lewitt, Sally Mann, Michael Kenna, and Sebastião Salgado, entered the collection. After 2012, several key gifts and purchases filled gaps in early-to-mid 20th century holdings, adding works by Lewis Hine, Laura Gilpin, Helen Levitt, Margaret Bourke White, W. Eugene Smith, Andre Kertesz, and Ruth Bernhard, and the post-WWII era with Bruce Davidson, Danny Lyon, Larry Burrows, Joel Meyerowitz, Graciela Iturbide, Maggie Taylor, and Linda Connor, among others.
In 2014, a change was initiated in the museum’s collecting in order to better serve a more active, rotating exhibition calendar. In 2016, the Harn curated the traveling exhibition Aftermath: The Fallout of War featuring Lynsey Addario, Rania Matar, Eman Mohammed, Suzanne Opton, Jennifer Karady, Farah Nosh, Simon Norfolk and Stephen Dupont. In 2019-20, Steve Schapiro and Terry Evans had solo exhibitions, I, Too, Am America and Stories from the American Prairies, respectively. In 2021, Ayana V. Jackson, Sheila Pree Bright, Tricia Hersey, Benji Reid, and Teju Cole were exhibited in Shadow to Substance; in 2022, Fabiola Jean Louis, Sammy Baloji, Zhou Hongbin, and Camille Seaman in AWE-some; and Lori Nix + Kathleen Gerber, Sarah Sense, Tamary Kudita, James Nachtwey, Gary Schneider and Jamal Shabazz in The Harn at 35 (2025). All entered the collection.
With its global reach and thematic range, the Harn’s photography collection celebrates fine art and documentary photographers whose practice gives form to world events, hopeful reveries, and the fundamental issues of our time across race, gender, and political differences to foster respect and community. Additionally, these photographs add to the collaborative possibilities across the Harn’s five collections, making the museum a rich, vital and timely public-service institution for students, faculty, and beyond.
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