Joseph Nicéphore Niépce's 'View from the Window at Le Gras' c. 1826. Photo by J. Paul Getty Museum.

The First Photograph will be loaned, along with 119 other images and photography-related items from the Harry Ransom Center’s Gernsheim collection, to the Reiss Englehorn Museum in Mannheim, Germany, for the exhibition “The Birth of Photography-Highlights of the Helmut Gernsheim Collection.” The exhibition runs from September 9 through January 6, 2013.

The First Photograph has been removed from display at the Ransom Center to be prepared for its departure in July. The First Photograph will be back on display at the Ransom Center in February 2013.

The First Photograph was acquired by the Ransom Center as part of the Gernsheim collection from Helmut and Alison Gernsheim…

Just last week, The Gernsheim Collection, co-published by the Harry Ransom Center and the University of Texas Press, received an Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award, which honors a distinguished catalog in the history of art published during the past year.

To celebrate this recognition, the Ransom Center is offering editor-signed copies of The Gernsheim Collection at a reduced price of $60 through March 15. Orders placed by this date will also include a set of five notecards featuring images from the Gernsheim collection.

Edited by Ransom Center Senior Research Curator Roy Flukinger, The Gernsheim Collection coincided with the Ransom Center’s 2010 exhibition Discovering the Language of Photography: The Gernsheim Collection, which explored the history of photography through the Center’s foundational photography collection. The Gernsheim…

"The Gernsheim Collection" (UT Press, 2010).

The Gernsheim Collection, co-published by the Harry Ransom Center and the University of Texas Press, has been awarded an Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award, which honors a distinguished catalog in the history of art published during the past year.

Edited by Ransom Center Senior Research Curator Roy Flukinger, The Gernsheim Collection coincided with the Ransom Center’s 2010 exhibition Discovering the Language of Photography: The Gernsheim Collection, which explored the history of photography through the Center’s foundational photography collection.

The Gernsheim collection is one of the most important collections of photography in the world. Amassed by the renowned husband-and-wife team of Helmut and Alison Gernsheim between 1945 and 1963, it contains an unparalleled range of images, beginning with the…

Cover of ‘The Gernsheim Collection’

Tonight, J. B. Colson, Professor Emeritus of Journalism and Fellow of the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, and Roy Flukinger, Ransom Center Senior Research Curator of Photography, discuss the lives and work of Helmut and Alison Gernsheim at the Ransom Center.

This event will be webcast live and is held in conjunction with the exhibition Discovering the Language of Photography: The Gernsheim Collection, on display through January 2, and the release of the book The Gernsheim Collection. A book signing of The Gernsheim Collection follows.

In this video clip from a 1978 interview, Colson asks Helmut Gernsheim about his passion for collecting and his career as a pioneering historian of photography. Helmut and Alison Gernsheim’s efforts significantly contributed…

Unidentified Photographer. Helmut and Alison Gernsheim hanging an exhibition at Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan. 1963.

Roy Flukinger, Senior Research Curator of Photography at the Ransom Center and author of The Gernsheim Collection, discusses the lives of Helmut and Alison Gernsheim and the historical photography collection they amassed and later sold to the Ransom Center in 1963.

Listen to audio clips of Flukinger discussing the hunt for the first photograph, how the Gernsheims began collecting, and the negotiations that led to the sale of their collection.

The Gernsheim Collection

In conjunction with the exhibition Discovering the Language of Photography: The Gernsheim Collection, the Ransom Center and the University of Texas Press have published The Gernsheim Collection.

The Gernsheim collection is one of the most important collections of photography in the world. Amassed by the renowned husband-and-wife team of Helmut and Alison Gernsheim between 1945 and 1963, it contains an unparalleled range of images, beginning with the world’s earliest-known photograph from nature, made by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce in 1826. The Gernsheim collection includes 35,000 important and representative photographs from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; a research library of some 3,600 books, journals, and published articles; about 250 autographed letters and manuscripts; and more than 200 pieces of early photographic…