Untitled

Description: Although Thomas Smillie, the Smithsonian’s first photographer and curator of photography, used images to catalog much of the institution’s physical object collection, he also extensively photographed pages of books on topics of personal interest to him as a way of copying the material for future use. Smillie also photographed letters and documents as a method of preserving the Smithsonian’s records. 

Medium: Cyanotype

Culture: American

Date: 1890