Large Photography Collection Finds Home at New Hampshire Institute of Art

Alfred Stieglitz's 'Camera Work' periodical. (Courtesy New Hampshire Institute of Art)

The history of photography doesn't hang on the walls at the Institute of Art in Manchester.

Instead, it's in books. The Teti Library, named after John Teti who donated the collection, is much like any library. Books sit on shelves.

So what's so exciting about that?

GS (6 secs): A hundred years ago, the only way you could disseminate photography was through publications.

That's Gary Samson, Chair of the Photography Department at the Institute.

GS (14 secs): You couldn't go to local museum or gallery and find photography up on the walls because it just wasn't viewed as an art form. So books became the major point of distribution for image making.

One major item in the collection is Camera Work, a periodical published by photography pioneer Alfred Stieglitz, from 1903 to 1917.

GS (14 secs): This was groundbreaking in what it did for photography in terms of establishing it as a true art form. And the people who are published in these books are some great names of photography.

The library contains work by photographers who produced the best art, as well as the early innovators of the medium, like Carlton Watkins.

He photographed Yosemite about seventy years before Ansel Adams.

GS (24 secs): Carleton Watkins had to invent landscape photography in essence. He had no predecessors. We can look at Ansel Adams and say, oh, Ansel Adams superb landscape photographer, a master of the medium. But with Watkins, Watkins didn't have a Ansel Adams look back to, he had to invent how landscapes would be composed and visualized, and he really was a genius how he did that.

From left to right: NHIA President Roger Williams, John Teti, and rare book dealer Andy Cahan, at the announcement of the Teti Collection. (Courtesy New Hampshire Institute of Art)

New Hampshire resident and photographer John Teti started the collection eight years ago with the help of rare book dealer Andy Cahan.

The two decided what kind of collection to build.

Teti put up the funds.

Cahan says his job was to get the books.

AC (15 secs) We looked for the influences. Where did photography go. What were the books that made it important for other photographers. You want to study photography, it's in the books, and here they are.

One of his favorites in the library is a 1930 book titled Egypt, by Fred Boissonnas.

AC (30 secs): It's just one of the most incredible pieces, sort of an unknown because of it's limitation is so small; only about 330 copies. But quite possibly done in the 20th century. It's done in three chapters, each for different periods of different Egyptian history. So the type, the borders, the color of the inks are all changed from one chapter to the next.

Another one of Cahan's favorites is The Last Men of the Revolution.

AC (28 Secs): The Reverend Hillard did this in 1864. He traveled around the country. He thought there was seven men left who fought in the Revolution. He found six of them, and photographed each one and an interview with each one. He starts out in the introduction saying something like: These were the last men who touched Washington. These who were the last who laid eyes on the father of our nation. It was so romantic.

Sean Lamoureux, a junior at the Institute, admits he could find many of these rare photos on the Internet.

But he says nothing compares to being able to see these prints in person.

SL (20 Secs) The photographs I find on the Internet are basically copies of what's in the library. You're able to see how tender the photographs are and how beautiful the tone ranges are. Technically they're perfect. On the Internet there's a lot of imperfections.

The collection is open to the Institute's students and faculty as well as to residents who make an appointment.

For NHPR News, I'm Brian Early in Manchester.