Municipal Photography in NYC
The NYT reports that a city clerk recently discovered that 20,000 photos in its collection were
taken by the same city photographer, Eugene de Salignac, who was the only photographer employed by the city's Department of Plant and Structures for 30 years, beginning in about 1903. Many of his photos are viewable at the
Department of Records online gallery, which I think we linked to a while ago. While looking into this a bit more, I discovered that between 1939 and 1941, another city agency, the Department of Taxes,
took a picture of every building in the 5 boroughs. This project resulted in 720,000 photographs, each of which has been microfilmed and can be viewed by anyone who visits the Muncipal Archives.
More on city photography: NYT Magazine re-profiles Diane Arbus, and runs some never-before-published photos.
categories:
NYC
posted by adm at 12:54 PM | #
