RG 32. Photographs

Scope and Contents 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...

Scope and Contents This category of photographic materials comprises transparent positives. They are arranged in four series: Series 1. Lantern Slides; Series 2. Mounted Film Transparencies; Series 3. Unmounted Film Transparencies; and Series 4. Slide Sets. This collection was created for those transparencies that are not part of an institutional record group or a personal paper group. The mounted transparencies, also known as slides, were used with a projector for teaching and presentations,...

Scope and Contents Cased images represent the first forms of photographs taken at Oberlin, with the earliest dating from soon after the invention of photography in 1839, and the majority from the 1850s. In the United States, daguerreotypes were the first common expressions of photography. Daguerreotypes, ambrotypes and tintypes exist only as single unique images that are not generated from negatives.  These images typically appear in period cases, which protected the cover glass of daguerreotypes and...

Scope and Contents Photographs: Oversize Prints is an artificial classification for prints larger than legal paper size (8.5 x 14”). These prints, if smaller than oversize, would have been relegated to the subject classifications used for smaller photographs such as portraits, buildings, and so on. A wide range of subject matter and types of images fall into this group. The physical sizes of the prints determined the way in which they were boxed. When this group of photographs was first organized...

Scope and Contents The photographs of graduates and former students are arranged in two series. A third series holds photographs of Oberlin community members associated in some way with the college. Loose photographs of graduates and former college students in Series 1, Subseries 1 are arranged chronologically by graduating class, beginning with 1836. Files include photographs taken while students attended Oberlin and after they left. Many of the latter were taken during class reunions. Some...

Scope and Contents Like the record group for graduate and former students, this group holds portraits dating from the earliest years of photography to the present. However, the earliest images are print copies of daguerreoptypes and other cased images, the originals of which are held in a separate record group (RG 32/3/4). The photographs are arranged into three series: 1. Faculty, Staff, Trustees, and Honorary Degree Recipients; 2. Presidents; and, 3. Other Individuals. Contents of Series 1 and 3 are...

Scope and Contents The Photograph Albums Collection comprises albums or album contents dating from 1861 to 2000. Fifteen of these date from the 19th century, with cartes-de-visite, collotypes, tintypes, cabinet cards, postcards, cyanotypes, and other early prints. Cyanotypes dominate the contents of albums dating from 1900 to 1910, typically taken by Oberlin students themselves. From the 1920s to the 1960s several College-produced albums feature quality gelatin silver prints made...

Scope and Contents The Oberlin College yearbook, titled the Hi-O-Hi, is a rich source of photographic documentation from 1889 to 2006, after which it ceased publication. In the final years of the yearbook, publication was erratic. The Hi-O-Hi photograph collection covers the years 1960-61, 1972-77, and the 1980s through 1994. There is less photographic documentation of the College in general for the 1980s though the early 2000s, and this...

Scope and Contents Class albums are photograph albums with portraits of the graduating members of a particular class year at Oberlin College, which sometimes include photographs of faculty members or the president of the College. The date range for these is 1858-1898, but some years are not represented. These albums replace the daguerreotype and ambroytpe group portraits of the preceding two decades as photographers adopted the methods of making multiple prints from wet or dry plate negatives. The...

Scope and Contents To establish and report on the service of Oberlin College men and women in World War I, the College published a special tribute in the 1920 issue of its yearbook, the Hi-O-Hi, featuring photographs of those who served. The College sent out a survey to former students with a request for photographs. About twenty-five percent of those who had served responded. Of special concern to the organizers of the tribute was the need in this institutional publication to recognize the thirty-two...