Encompassing more than one hundred works, from the Daguerreian era to today’s digital age, this stunning volume will explore the evolution of photographic portraiture through treasures from the National Portrait Gallery’s wide-ranging collection at the Smithsonian Institution.

Published to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the photography collection’s founding, the book will highlight the medium’s role in democratizing portraiture. Works by leading photographers, including Richard Avedon, Mathew Brady, Annie Leibovitz, and James Van Der Zee, portray some of the country’s most significant individuals, including Abraham Lincoln, John Steinbeck, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Lin-Manuel Miranda, emphasizing the remarkable people on both sides of the camera.

About The Author

Ann M. Shumard joined the National Portrait Gallery’s department of photographs in 1979 and has served as the museum’s senior curator of photographs since 2001. Throughout her tenure, she has played an integral role in the development and interpretation of the museum’s photography collection, which now numbers more than 11,000 objects—from daguerreotypes to born-digital images.