All-College Photographs, 1912-1929

This collection comprises Subgroup I, Flat Panorama Photographs and Subgroup II, Rolled Panorama and Other Rolled Photographs (cannot be flattened without conservation treatment). The panorama photographs were taken with special mechanized cameras such as the Cirkut, which made a wide sweep exposing a long roll of film to capture large groups or vistas. The time required to expose the broad sweep of film accounts for the appearance in some of these photographs of one individual at both the left and right-hand sides of the prints. These special cameras were in general use by professional photographers from about 1906 to the late 1940s. The prints from the panorama camera negatives were usually about a foot in height and three to four feet in length, but were often much larger, and were usually rolled for storage if not framed.

The majority of these photographs depict groups at Oberlin College; the earliest is an all-college personnel panorama from 1906. Other campus panoramas feature views of buildings and surrounding grounds. Photographs taken outside Oberlin include Painesville, Camp Sherman and Vermilion in Ohio; Kentucky, New York, Washington, D.C., and China. All of these photographs relate to Oberlin College in some way. Of note are group panoramas of the Anti-Saloon League, founded in Oberlin in 1893, from 1915 to 1926.

This grouping includes panoramas and oversize photographic prints that had been stored as rolls. Over time the paper became dry and brittle, resisting flattening without professional humidification. Rolled photographs are easily damaged by forced flattening, which cracks and pops off the image layer. The photographs in rolls in Subgroup II are restricted.