Research

The Photographic Archive of the American Academy in Rome consists of several valuable and specialized collections of photographs on archaeology, architecture and art, as well as landscape architecture and gardens. It also includes special collections important to the history of the Academy.

Archaeology

Askew Collection (1932)
A. Beato and H. Des Granges Collection (second half of nineteenth century)
Bini Collection (1970–80)
Cosa Collection (1948–88)
Detweiler Collection (ca. 1930)
Fototeca Unione (ca. 1936–present)
Gatteschi Collection (1900–35)
Knauer Collection (1960)
Laidlaw Collection (1960–80)
Library Collection (until 1939)
Ludwig Collection (1967–68)
McCann Collection (1965–87)
Moscioni Collection (1868–1921)
Parker Collection (ca. 1865–1879)
Regia Collection (1965–75)
Van Deman Collection (1898–1930)
Vermeule Collection (1966, 1976)
Warsher Collection (ca. 1930–37)
Winslow Collection (ca. 1950–60)

Special Collections

American Academy in Rome, Buildings and Memories (1904–present)
Berman Collection (ca. 1950)
Fellows’ Work Collection (1911–60)
Aronson Collection (1979)

Landscape Architecture and Gardens

Landscape Collection (ca. 1918–20)
Masson Collection (ca. 1950–70)
J. K. Smith Collection (ca. 1923)

Contemporary Collections

Abigail Cohen Collection (1990–2000)
Paul Warchol Collection (2001)
A Question of Time Collection (2009)

***

Archaeology

Askew Collection (1932)

Arch of Septimius Severus in the Roman Forum. 296 gelatin plates and prints. The collection is made up of photographs commissioned by Henry Ess Askew, FAAR’32, for his study of the Arch of Septimius Severus in the Roman Forum. In 1931–32 photographs of the reliefs of the Arch were taken by photographer Cesare Faraglia, while Askew took most of the detail photographs himself. In 1938, as Askew was unable to finish his work, the Academy took over the rights for publication and the glass-plate negatives. The project was taken over by Erling Olsen, FAAR’39, but was interrupted by World War II, in which he lost his life. Olsen left his notes at the American Academy.

The work was finally completed by Richard Brilliant FAAR’62 and published in 1967 as The Arch of Septimius Severus in the Roman Forum (Memoirs of The American Academy in Rome, 29).

A. Beato and H. Des Granges Collection (second half of nineteenth century)

Archaeological views of Thebes (Egypt), architecture and monuments in Jerusalem. 21 vintage prints.

Bini Collection (1970–80)

Archaeological sites in Rome and in the Roman world. Roman and Etruscan art. Some Medieval and Renaissance art and architecture. Ca. 5,000 negatives on film and 1,500 slides

Cosa Collection

Photographic documentation of excavations conducted by AAR in the ancient town of Cosa (Etruria/Tuscany), in 1948–88. Ca. 1,260 gelatin plates; ca. 2,500 film negatives; ca. 7,400 in 35mm; ca. 13,000 prints.

Detweiler Collection (ca. 1930)

Archaeological sites in the Middle East (Iran, Iraq, and Syria). Ca. 800 negatives on film and 2,120 vintage prints

Fototeca Unione (ca. 1936 to the present)

Architecture and topography of Rome and of the Roman world. 29,175 negatives on film and prints. The Fototeca Unione was created and enlarged by Ernest Nash as a center of visual research in ancient Roman architecture and topography. The original patrimony donated by Nash to the International Union of Institutes of Archaeology, History, and History of Art numbered 3,135 negatives and 1,500 photographic prints. The American Academy in Rome has housed this collection since 1956.

Ernest Nash, born in 1898 near Potsdam, came to Italy in 1936. Here he developed his two great interests: the study of the architecture of ancient Rome and the practice of photography. He set out to record remains in Rome and in other archaeological sites, such as Pompeii, Ostia, and Herculaneum. In 1939 he was forced to emigrate to the United States because of the Italian racial laws. In 1952 Nash moved back to Italy, where he died in 1974. The photographs taken by Nash beginning with his first visit to Italy are still considered an important visual resource for the study of ancient monuments. Over the years, while Nash was the Director of the Fototeca, the original nucleus on Rome and ancient Italy was augmented by photos of the Roman Empire (many of them taken by Nash himself) and of medieval monuments, as well as reproductions from other archives and relevant graphic documentation.

A selection of Nash’s most important pictures was used in his publication Pictorial Dictionary of Ancient Rome (1962). The Fototeca Unione continued to grow after the death of Nash until 1992, from 14,000 to over 30,000 negatives with new photographic campaigns in Italy, North Africa, and the Middle East. In 1979–82 the collection, already internationally well known, was made more accessible through its reproduction in microfiche, which can be consulted in major university libraries.

Gatteschi Collection (1900–35)

Architecture and reconstruction drawings of Imperial Rome. 4 portfolios: 300 vintage prints. The Gatteschi Collection in the Photographic Archive of the American Academy in Rome is composed by photographs of Roman architecture compared with reconstructive architectural drawings of Imperial Rome. It consists of 346 photographic prints (316 silver salt and 30 albumen prints) that may be dated from the end of the nineteenth century to the 1930s.

The reconstruction drawings were signed by various artists, always under the direction of Gatteschi; these include Guido e Augusto Trabacchi, Bellioni, and Angeletti. We do not know the names of the photographers, but there were definitely more than one. In some cases the work of professional photographers was used, and in others the photographer was probably Gatteschi himself. He often appears in the photograph to provide a human scale, with the monuments in the background. The two prints were mounted on a single board (10 are singles) to allow comparison between the reconstruction proposed by Gatteschi and the archeological ruins depicted in the photograph. This kind of layout was conceived by Gatteschi himself, as he explained in the preface of his book Restauri della Roma Imperiale (1924). The collection also includes photos of topographical maps annotated by Gatteschi himself.

Knauer Collection

Monumental sites in Mediterranean area and in Northern Europe.

Laidlaw Collection (1960–80)

First Style of Pompeian painting. 2,430 negatives on film.

Library Collection (until 1939)

Art and archaeology of Italy and Europe. Ca. 2,000 lantern slides, ca. 2,000 albumen and gelatine prints, and ca. 1,000 stereoscopic lantern slides.

Ludwig Collection

Renaissance marble reliefs.

McCann Collection

Documentation created during the Cosa port excavations.

Moscioni Collection (1868–1921)

Etruscan sites and art objects of Etruscan provenance. 926 gelatin plates and vintage prints. Romualdo Moscioni was born in Viterbo and came to Rome in 1868 to set up a photographic practice, specializing in archaeology, architecture, and art. He published four editions of his catalogue, the last (greatly revised) in 1921. After his death in 1929, his archive of ca. 30,000 glass plates was divided among the American Academy (donated by Prentice Duell), the Photographic Archive of the Vatican Museums, the Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo e la Documentazione, and the Archivio Fotografico Comunale in Rome.

Parker Collection (ca. 1865–79)

Roman and Medieval art and architecture in Italy. 240 collodion glass plates and modern prints, 67 vintage prints. John Henry Parker was born in London in 1806. An English scholar, he was interested in the history of architecture and in restoration. After a period spent in Rome, Parker entered the field of classical archaeology. In 1868 he founded the British and American Archaeological Society of Rome. In 1870 he was elected director of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. He died there in 1884.

From 1867 to 1870 he carried out his main project to photograph the principal monuments of Rome, from the classical age to 1600. He employed local photographers De Bonis, Filippo Spina, Carlo Baldassare Simelli, Francesco Sidoli, Filippo Lais, and Giovanni Battista Colamedici, as well as a Canadian one, Charles Smeaton. The glass plate negatives at the American Academy in Rome are all that survives of the over 3,300 photographs of Roman and medieval architecture and art executed and cataloged under his direction. The collection has a considerable interest, especially as it documents the excavations made in the second half of the nineteenth century. Many of his photographs were used to illustrate his publication Archaeology of Rome (1874–76).

In 1893 Parker’s archive of negatives was destroyed in a fire in the Palazzo Negroni-Caffarelli in Via Condotti in Rome. Beside the American Academy and the Archivio Fotografico Comunale in Rome, which have a considerable number of prints, almost complete sets of Parker prints are in the British School and in the German Archaeological Institute (Rome), in the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology (University of Michigan), and in the Ashmolean Museum and the Bodleian Library (Oxford).

Regia Collection

Photographic documentation of the excavations conducted by AAR in the Regia in the Roman Forum, in 1948–65. 97 glass plate negatives, ca. 70 contacts; 97 digital images. 7 films 13 x 18.

Van Deman Collection (1898–1930)

Archaeology, architecture and building techniques in the Roman world. Travels in Europe and Africa. 2,727 cellulose nitrate negatives, vintage prints and modern prints.

The collection is composed by the photographs taken by Esther Van Deman during archaeological surveys in the Roman Campagna, excavations in the Roman Forum, and study trips in Europe, Italy, and North Africa between 1898 and 1930. It is a rare specimen of a personal and professional photographic archive, which also provides interesting insights into contemporary life.

Esther Van Deman was born in 1862 in Ohio. In 1901–3, she was a student at the American School of Classical Studies in Rome, carrying out research on the Vestals, a topic central to her interest. Van Deman’s close involvement in the contemporary archaeological reality turned her original interest into the study of more specifically archaeological problems. As Carnegie Fellow from 1906 to 1910 and FASCSR’09, she continued her study of Roman building materials and techniques. Except for brief periods in America for teaching and lectures, she stayed in Rome, where she died in 1937.

Van Deman taught herself the art of photography and found a passionate fellow photographer in the British archaeologist Thomas Ashby, with whom she undertook the study of Roman aqueducts. Some of Van Deman’s photographs were used in her important publications on Roman topography and architecture: The Atrium Vestae (1909); The Building of Roman Aqueducts (1934); and particularly Ancient Roman Construction in Italy from the Prehistoric Era to Augustus (1947). This book, on which she was still working at her death, was published posthumously and edited by her colleague and friend, Marion Blake.

Vermeule Collection

Greek and Roman antiquities.

Warsher Collection (ca. 1930–37)

Pompeii. 18 albums: ca. 1,500 vintage prints.

Winslow Collection (ca. 1950–60)

Roman architecture and aqueducts in the Campagna Romana. 3 albums: ca. 300 vintage prints.

Special Collections

American Academy in Rome, Buildings and Memories

The collection is composed by photographs of the various seats the American Academy in Rome had from its founding, images on the construction of the McKim, Mead & White building (1913–14), interior and exterior views of the building, Villa Aurelia (early twentieth century) and other AAR properties. The “Memories” section includes the opening of the Academy Gallery and of the annual exhibitions (1920–59), the visits of King Victor Emanuel III and other dignitaries, moments from the fellows’ life, AAR staff, and other AAR events.

Berman Collection (ca. 1950)

Theater, ballet, and opera designs. Personal travel albums and portraits. 420 negatives and 10 albums. Eugene Berman (1899–1972) was a painter and designer for the opera, theater, and ballet. He was a Resident at the Academy in 1959. Upon his death he left the Academy his negatives and prints, both personal (travel albums, portraits etc.) and professional (photographs of his drawing and stage designs). He also donated 1,100 books on art and architecture to the Library.

Fellows’ Work Collection (1911–60)

Painting, sculpture, studies in architecture and landscape. Ca. 2,000 gelatin plates and vintage prints. The photographs in this collection were made between 1911 and 1961. The bulk of the collection consists of record photographs of architectural drawings, landscape drawings, paintings, and sculptures created by ca. 250 Fellows and Visitors, either individually or as part of collaborative projects. The collection has significant archival value for the Academy’s institutional history while at the same time presenting a chronological view of artistic trends and tastes over a fifty-year period. Also included are photographs of the opening of the Academy Gallery and of the annual exhibitions (1920–59), the visits of King Victor Emanuel III and dignitaries, and interior and exterior views of the Academy’s buildings and grounds.

Landscape Architecture and Gardens

Landscape Collection (ca. 1918–20)

Italian villas and gardens. 3,200 prints.

Masson Collection (ca. 1950–70)

Italian architecture, villas, and gardens. 5,500 negatives on film. Marion Babs Johnson, who published under the pseudonym of Georgina Masson, lived in Rome from the middle of the 1940s. She wrote various historical studies and biographies, but her greatest interest was the city of Rome and Italian architecture, especially villas and gardens. A specialist on this subject, she used her photographs in her publications Italian Villas and Palaces (1959) and her very famous Companion Guide to Rome (1965).

During her lifetime in Rome she was very close to AAR, and upon her death in 1980 she willed to the American Academy all her photographic negatives, slides, and color trasparencies. The subjects of the collection are mainly Italian architecture, villas and gardens, cityscapes, and landscapes. The negatives are datable from the late 1940s through the 1960s. A part of the collection is also of remarkable anthropological interest, such as those negatives on costumes, local processions, and religious rites. Masson’s negatives and notes on botany, gardens, and horticulture, closely related to the material bequeathed to the American Academy, are conserved in the Camillo Caetani Foundation in Rome.

J. K. Smith Collection (ca. 1923)

Architecture and gardens in Italy and Europe. 1,060 prints and 660 photomechanical prints.

Contemporary Collections

Aronson Collection (aerial views of Rome).

Paul Warchol Collection (7 photographs depicting a house designed by Toshiko Mori).

Abigail Cohen Collection

A Question of Time Collection (selection of contemporary photographs from the exhibitions held at the American Academy in Rome, 2009–10).