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Frederick Wallace Kent, photographer, was born in 1894 in De Witt, Iowa. His fascination with cameras began early and led to the creation of what his family estimated were one million photos. Kent's formal career was mostly spent at the University of Iowa, where he was a lecturer and instructor in photography from 1923 until 1925. He also served as curator of photographic apparatus and consulting photographer for the university from 1936 until 1947. Kent founded University Photo Service, and was manager from 1947 until 1963. He served as a part-time photographer of special projects with that service for the next twelve years, retiring in 1975. Kent and his wife, the former Clara Hartman, whom he married in 1917 and with whom he had two children, were close friends of Iowa native Alfred M. Bailey and his wife, Muriel. The two couples honeymooned together, traveling from Iowa City to Burlington, Iowa, by canoe, and Kent is said to have inspired Bailey's own lifelong interest in photography. Bailey later moved to Denver, where he held various positions, including museum director, at the Colorado Museum of Natural History, now the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. Over the years, the Kents and Baileys frequently visited each other and traveled together, events that Kent, also an amateur ornithologist and a hunter, captured on film. By the time Kent died in 1984, he was famous for pictures of both ordinary life and extraordinary events. He pioneered the use of stereographs in medicine, producing three-dimensional pictures for doctors, and in 1947, Eastman Kodak commissioned him to write the first manual for medical photography. Of the tens of thousands of images he created, Kent considered his most famous to be a picture of football star Nile Kinnick ready to pass the ball, which Kent recorded in 1939, the year Kinnick was named All-American. In addition to the collection of his photos of trips to the Western Slope and Front Range of Colorado at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, collections of Kent's photographs are housed at the University of Iowa Archives and at the State Historical Society of Iowa.

Frederick Wallace Kent, photographer, was born in 1894 in De Witt, Iowa. His fascination with cameras began early and led to the creation of what his family estimated were one million photos.

Kent's formal career was mostly spent at the University of Iowa, where he was a lecturer and instructor in photography from 1923 until 1925. He also served as curator of photographic apparatus and consulting photographer for the university from 1936 until 1947. Kent founded University Photo Service, and was manager from 1947 until 1963. He served as a part-time photographer of special projects with that service for the next twelve years, retiring in 1975.

Kent and his wife, the former Clara Hartman, whom he married in 1917 and with whom he had two children, were close friends of Iowa native Alfred M. Bailey and his wife, Muriel. The two couples honeymooned together, traveling from Iowa City to Burlington, Iowa, by canoe, and Kent is said to have inspired Bailey's own lifelong interest in photography. Bailey later moved to Denver, where he held various positions, including museum director, at the Colorado Museum of Natural History, now the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. Over the years, the Kents and Baileys frequently visited each other and traveled together, events that Kent, also an amateur ornithologist and a hunter, captured on film.

By the time Kent died in 1984, he was famous for pictures of both ordinary life and extraordinary events. He pioneered the use of stereographs in medicine, producing three-dimensional pictures for doctors, and in 1947, Eastman Kodak commissioned him to write the first manual for medical photography. Of the tens of thousands of images he created, Kent considered his most famous to be a picture of football star Nile Kinnick ready to pass the ball, which Kent recorded in 1939, the year Kinnick was named All-American.

In addition to the collection of his photos of trips to the Western Slope and Front Range of Colorado at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, collections of Kent's photographs are housed at the University of Iowa Archives and at the State Historical Society of Iowa.