Photography

The Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona is recognized as one of the world’s finest academic art museums and study centers for the history of photography. The Center opened in 1975, following a meeting between the University President John Schaefer and Ansel Adams. Beginning with the archives of five living master photographers—Ansel Adams, Wynn Bullock, Harry Callahan, Aaron Siskind, and Frederick Sommer—the collection has grown to include 270 archival collections. Among these are some of the most recognizable names in 20th century North American photography: W. Eugene Smith, Lola Alvarez Bravo, Edward Weston, and Garry Winogrand. Altogether there are over eight million archival objects in the Center’s collection including negatives, work prints, contact sheets, albums, scrapbooks, correspondence, writings, audiovisual materials and memorabilia. In addition to whole archival collections the Center also actively acquires individual photographs by modern and contemporary photographers. There are currently more than 90,000 works by over 2,200 photographers. A library of books, journals, and exhibition and auction catalogs including many rare publications plus an extensive oral history collection complements the archival and fine print collections. The combined art, archival, and research collections at the Center provide an unparalleled resource for research, exhibitions, loans, and traveling exhibitions.

In 2006, Phoenix Art Museum and the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona in Tucson inaugurated a highly innovative and unprecedented collaboration to bring the finest in photography to Phoenix Art Museum visitors. It established a vibrant new photography exhibition program at the Museum, while bringing the Center’s world-renowned collections to new and larger audiences.

One of the nation’s leading art museums, Phoenix Art Museum presents international exhibitions of the world’s great art and features a collection that spans the centuries and the globe – American, Asian, contemporary, European, Latin American, and Western American art, and fashion design.

Now, through the combined efforts of these two organizations, Phoenix Art Museum visitors can experience unparalleled excellence in the field of photography in the Museum’s Doris and John Norton Gallery for the Center for Creative Photography, curated by Norton Family Assistant Curator of Photography Audrey Sands.