The B. and H. Henisch
Photo-History Collection
Exhibit Room
201A Pattee Library
For more than forty years, Bridget A. and the late Heinz K. Henisch (1922-2006) have built a teaching collection on the history of photography that illustrates and documents, through evolving photographic techniques, the development and changes of fashion, political propaganda, advertising, humor, and book design, among other areas of interest. Their collection, drawn from American and international sources, contains some masterpieces of the art of photography, but its overall concern is with the social role of photography in the nineteenth century and the way in which photography was accepted and used for a great variety of purposes, from artistic self-expression to advertising.
The collection, acquired from the Henisches in 1995, includes a wide array of images, including daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, tintypes, ivorytypes, opaltypes, cyanotypes, daguerreotype cases, albums (family and travel), nineteenth-century prints on paper, prints on unusual materials (cloth and leather, for example), photographically illustrated books (nineteenth-century books with tipped-in photographic prints), cabinet cards, cartes-de-visite, photo-related sheet music, early advertising material, and humor. There is a special emphasis on overpainted photographs of all kinds.
The B. and H. Henisch Photo-History Collection Exhibit Room invites the viewer not only to a celebration of photographic excellence but also to a gentle exercise in social anthropology--an exploration of the varied relationships between photography and painting, book publishing, journalism, war, and humor, as well as the manner in which photography has served as a mode of expression for sentiments public and private. To present this variety of elements comprehensively would be an immense task, but a flavor of the enterprise can be conveyed in less ambitious ways by the display of selected groups of images and photographica. The exhibits demonstrate "the photographic experience" in its variety, complexity, and richness. Most of the items on display were found in the dusty barns and flea markets of central Pennsylvania. It can come as no surprise to learn that in such settings work by Strunk of Reading, Pennsylvania, turns up more frequently than that by Nadar of Paris.
Many of the items in the collection are described in three books by Heinz and Bridget Henisch, all published by the Penn State Press: The Photographic Experience, 1839-1914: Images and Attitudes (1994); The Painted Photograph, 1839-1914: Origins, Techniques, and Aspirations (1996); and Positive Pleasures: Early Photography and Humor (1998).
Heinz K. Henisch was Emeritus Professor of the History of Photography at Penn State. With his first course (Art History 450) in 1974, he helped establish an advanced degree program in photo-historical studies at the University. He was a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain and was the founding editor of the journal History of Photography, an International Quarterly.
Bridget Henisch, a medievalist and food historian, has written Fast and Feast: Food in Medieval Society (Penn State Press); Cakes and Characters, an English Christmas Tradition (Prospect Books, London); and The Medieval Calendar Year (Penn State Press).
The B. and H. Henisch Photo-History Collection Exhibit Room, dedicated on November 14, 2000, contains a display area for changing exhibits and is accessible to the public for study purposes. The Henisch Website offers further details.
For information, contact:
Rare Books and Manuscripts
Special Collections Library
Penn State University Libraries
104 Paterno Library
University Park, PA 16802-1808
Phone (814) 865-1793
Fax (814) 863-5318
E-mail Sandra Stelts
