This photo, taken by English photographer Francis Frith on his first visit to Egypt, is one of 26,000 images in the Sam Wagstaff Collection. Wagstaff was an important collector and curator of photography through the 1970s and '80s. He sold his collection to the J. Paul Getty Museum, which has just published a book about Wagstaff and his photographs called "The Thrill of the Chase." As a collector, Wagstaff reveled in championing photographers who were not being shown in establishment museums.
The J. Paul Getty Museum
A man is seen at a printer in this photo taken by Lewis W. Hine. Hine is most known for photographing child labor in America in the early 1900s, and his photographs where used to help establish child-labor laws in the United States.
The J. Paul Getty Museum
U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, center, was photographed by Alexander Gardner on the Antietam battlefield in Maryland. The Scottish-born Gardner immigrated to the United States at the beginning of the Civil War. He became friends with Allan Pinkerton, left, who was a private investigator and head of the Union Intelligence Service.
The J. Paul Getty Museum
The photographer of this photo, "Looking down Yosemite Valley," is unknown, but the Getty Museum guesses it was taken around 1872 by either Carleton Watkins, C.L. Weed or Eadweard J. Muybridge. In the late 1800s, many photographers traveled throughout the American West to record the landscape. Sometimes it was for the government. Sometimes it was for railroad companies looking for the best route. And sometimes it was just to make good photographs to sell once they returned home.
The J. Paul Getty Museum
In 1854, pioneering photographer Roger Fenton left England to photograph the Crimean War, where he became one of the very first war photographers. He made this image, "Valley of the Shadow of Death," on April 23, 1855.
The J. Paul Getty Museum
Arthur Mole became famous during World War I when he started making "living photographs," where tens of thousands of military personnel were arranged to form compositions. The "Human Statue of Liberty," made in 1918, involved 18,000 people from Camp Dodge in Des Moines, Iowa. It was created with the help of John D. Thomas.
The J. Paul Getty Museum
This image, from Jo Ann Callis, is titled "Man at Table, after David Evans." Callis emerged in the late '70s as one of the first important practitioners of the "fabricated photographs" movement, according to the Getty Museum. "The images are more about the routine of life, the actions in which we partake every day," she said about her work. "I set my photos in a home because having a home is something for which I'm so grateful and consider a backbone to my life."
The J. Paul Getty Museum
Photographer Philippe Halsman met painter Salvador Dali, pictured, in 1941. After that, they worked together at least once a year. "An elating game," Halsman wrote in 1972, "creating images that did not exist, except in our imaginations. Whenever I needed a striking protagonist for one of my wild ideas, Dali would graciously oblige. Whenever Dali thought of a photograph so strange that it seemed impossible to produce, I tried to find a solution."
The J. Paul Getty Museum
During the Civil War, photographer Henry P. Moore traveled to South Carolina with the 3rd New Hampshire Regiment. These are the slaves of Confederate Brig. Gen. Thomas Fenwick Drayton.
The J. Paul Getty Museum
Very little is known about Irish photographer John Robert Parsons, other than he created a series of portraits of Jane Morris, pictured, in 1865. Morris, who was married to writer and artist William Morris, frequently modeled for Parsons and the painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti, with whom she had an affair.
The J. Paul Getty Museum
Edward S. Curtis' interest in photographing Native Americans began in 1895, when he photographed Princess Angeline. He spent most of the next 20 years documenting what remained of their culture in America. This image is called "The Eclipse Dance, 1910-14."
The J. Paul Getty Museum
This photo was taken in 1857 at the Church of St. Ouen in Rouen, France. Photographer Louis-Auguste Bisson and his brother, Auguste-Rosalie, worked with large-format cameras using a wet-plate process that made glass negatives. When photographic postcards became popular, the Bissons refused to make small prints of their work and they were forced to close their studio.
