Photographs have become one of the most important formats for documenting the human experience. And George Mason University's Special Collections & Archives (SC&A) offers world-class collections of photographs for research and exhibitions. They are an ever-growing part of SC&A's collections, now made even more accessible through images in SC&A's Digitized Collections website on the Internet.

Photograph collections in SC&A include the following:

Abraham Anson Papers - This collection contains materials relating to Anson's career in the field of photogrammetry and remote sensing, including publications, aerial photographs, working papers, lab notes, glass plate negatives, and slides.

Oliver F. Atkins (1916-1977), one of mid-century America's most prolific photograpers, was born February 18, 1917 in Hyde Park, Massachusetts. Beginning as a staff photographer and later chief photographer for the Birmingham Post, he moved to Washington where he worked for the Washington Daily News from 1940 to 1942. During WW II, he served as a correspondent and photographer for the American Red Cross. After the war, Atkins joined the staff of the Saturday Evening Post where he photographed many important leaders of the United States and the world. Among them were Truman, Eisenhower, Nixon, John and Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., Winston Churchill, Gamel Nasser, Krushchev, Tito, and Nehru. In 1969, Atkins became the personal photographer of President Richard M. Nixon and chief White House photographer. Of his many images of Nixon, the series documenting the meeting of December 18, 1970 with Elvis Presley is the most famous and the most requested. The Collection contains over 50,000 images of American political and cultural history spanning the years 1948 to 1974.

Jean Louis Barrault Photograph Collection Barrault, born in France in 1910, was an esteemed and innovative fixture in French theatre and film for five decades from the 1930s to 1980s. He trained as a mime and an actor, and later directed both screen and stage productions. With Madeleine Renaud, his wife, he founded a theatrical company in Paris in 1947, after acting and directing with the Comédie Française. Barrault later directed the Théâtre d'Orsay and the Théâtre des Nations. Digital Collection

Broadside Photograph Collection. Over 2,000 photographs taken between 1975 and 1997. Topics in the collection include: images of the campus; student organizations; university sports; campus events; university administrative units; personalities; featured entertainers; restaurants; and arts. The majority of the images are in black-and-white. Total volume of the collection is 2.3 cubic feet or 3.5 linear feet.

Christine Drennon European Lantern Slide Collection - This collection contains lantern slides with images and maps of European cities in France, the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden and Italy.

Federal Theatre Project Photographs number 3,000 offical photographs and over 8,700 negatives documenting the work of the Federal Theatre Project (FTP). The FTP was a Works Progress Administration (WPA) program designed to put unemployed actors, writers, and other theater personnel to work in their chosen fields during the Great Depression of the 1930s. The Collection spans FTP's beginning in 1936 through its end in 1939. Taken by official WPA photographers, the photographs feature such subjects as FTP plays, portraits of casts and crews, audiences, equipment, stages, and costumes.

Edith McChesney Ker Papers - This collection contains approximately 10,000 slides, scrapbooks, publications, and archival materials relating to Edith Ker's nature expeditions around the world.

Larkin Family Photograph Collection - This collection contains dozens of family photographs from the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century, exhibiting a range of early photographic technology including albumen prints, tintypes and cyanotypes. Only two of the photographs are dated--one from 1886 and another from 1905--but several contain inscriptions of photo studios--including G. W. Davis and Unique--with addresses indicating that they were taken in Washington, D.C. The photographs range from professional studio portraits to informal group pictures, which appear to have been taken in more rural locales. Several of the photos show Victorian interiors and exteriors as well as horse carriages, row-boats and railroad tracks. Few of the subjects are identified, but photo-envelopes with the collection include the names Ceyton R. Larkin, Charles Rozier Larkin, Paul S. Williams, and Mrs. J. L. Johnson.

Richard Nixon Presidential Photograph Collection - Part of the Oliver F. Atkins Collection, this collection contains black-and-white and color photographs of President Richard M. Nixon, the Nixon family, staff, and visitors to the White House. It also documents his trips abroad and campaign activities.

John Rapp, Jr. Photograph Collection - This collection contains nearly 200 negatives of family photographs in unknown locations. Some of the photographs are indoors and some are outdoors, some of individual girls, boys, men, and women and some of groups. The negatives are large, approximately 4.25 x 2.5," and ,based on clothing styles, appear to date from the 1920s.

Kjell Sandved Nature Photograph Collection - This collection contains thousands of natural history slides taken by nature photographer Kjell Sandved. Included are slides of flowers, fish, sea anemone, and hundreds of butterfly slides with identification information--family, genus, species, vernacular name, and locality--individually listed on each.

Arthur E. Scott (1913-1977), widely known as "Scotty" on Capitol Hill, first covered the United States Congress in 1935 as a photographer for the Washington Times. Later, he worked for International News Service and United Press International. In 1955, he became the photographer for the Republican Senatorial Committee where he served for the next twenty years. During his last year with the U.S. Senate, he was the official photo-historian for the Senate Historical Office. There he set to work on a project he had advocated for many years - collecting a likeness of every person who had served as a United States senator. His collection reflects the entire forty-years of Scott's association with Congress. It features over 3,500 photographs and negatives of United States Senators, Congress, the Capitol, and its surroundings dating from the mid-1930s to the 1970s.

Charles Baptie (1914-  ), photographer, printer, and publisher, was born in Munhall, Pennsylvania on March 13, 1914. As photographer and public relations person for Capital Airlines, Baptie recorded the life of the airline for many years. When Capital Airlines merged with United Airlines, he left the company and formed his own business, Charles Baptie Studios. Since that time, Baptie has photographically illustrated more than fifty books and other publications, such as Capital Airlines: A Nostalgic Flight Into the Past; Great Houses of Washington; Camera on Assignment (with Ollie Atkins); a sixteen-volume Encyclopedia of United States History; Guest House of the Presidents; a story on the Blair Lee House; and Mid the Hills of Pennsylvania. As a photo-journalist he covered feature stories for leading magazines and Sunday supplements, where he met and photographed many of the world's leaders and notables. The Collection contains over 4,000 photographic images.

Reston Times Photograph Collection features over 7,500, 35-mm negatives of published and unpublished photographs taken by journalists from the Reston Times newspaper. The Collection spans the years 1970-1980. Because Reston is one of the world's most successful and historic planned communities on a comprehensive scale, there is keen interest in the photographs by architects, historians, and developers. Subjects include Reston, VA places, personalities, and events.