Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives

The Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives is a research and reference center devoted to the collection, preservation and dissemination of visual materials that encourage and support the study of the arts, cultures and history of Africa. The archives collections contain approximately 500,000 items, including rare collections of glass plate negatives, lantern slides, stereographs, postcards, maps and engravings. The Elisofon Archives staff works with art historians, anthropologists, photographers, filmmakers and other specialists in acquiring and preserving these visual resources.

Eliot Elisofon was an internationally known photographer and filmmaker whose enduring visual record of African life from 1947 to 1972 was published in magazines such as Life and the National Geographic. As a filmmaker, he worked on film and television projects including the Black African Heritage Series (1972), a four-part documentary on African arts and cultures. Elisofon’s association with the National Museum of African Art began as a founding trustee in 1964. Upon his death in 1973, Elisofon donated his African materials to the museum, including over 50,000 black-and-white negatives and photographs, 30,000 color slides, and 120,000 feet of motion picture film and sound materials. The bequest became the foundation for the Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives.

In addition to the collection of Eliot Elisofon, major collections include over 5,000 black-and-white photographs taken by Constance Stuart Larrabee in South Africa between 1936 and 1983, over 10,000 slides depicting Yoruba art and culture by Henry Drewal and Margaret Thompson Drewal, and a historical collection of over 13,000 postcards. Special collections include late 19th- and early 20th-century photographic albums with significant anthropological and historical research value.