The Capitol Photo Service Collection (SP 114) consists of several thousand oversize photographs of local business, organization, school, political, and other groups in locally significant settings, both indoors and outdoors, from 1957 to 2000. HSW interns have been hard at work towards making this collection accessible for researchers; this is Part I of a series of posts regarding their efforts.
Guest post by Society intern, University of Maryland graduate student Trish Greene:
Throughout the summer HSW interns Emily Keithly, Trish Greene, Elise Fariello, Amelia Raines, Rachel McBrayer, and Brianne Roth have spent at least two days a week cataloging the contents of the Capitol Photo Service (CPS) collection, and have produced a preliminary inventory for the project moving forward. To say this collection is huge is an understatement: not only are the photographs themselves massive (some up to fifty seven inches long) but they are also staggering in number with several thousand individual prints. Before anything else can be done with this collection, we needed to figure out exactly what we have.
Capitol Photo Service was operated by Ed Segal in the D.C. area from the 1950s until the early 2000s. Over his long career, Segal and his photographers were present at many milestones both for D.C. residents and the country at large. Capitol Photo Service specialized in panoramic photographs, a medium that is perfect for taking pictures of large groups of people. Also included in the collection is the original circa-1920s Kodak Cirkut panoramic camera used to take these photos, as well as various other items including awards, advertisements, and records relating to the photographs (see Cirkut Maxiumus Part II for more details).
While occasions such as President Ronald Reagan’s 1981 inauguration and Pope John Paul II’s 1979 visit to D.C. are notable, the local interest of the Capitol Photo Service collection is what makes it unique and truly valuable. Many schools, churches, and clubs in the District and surrounding area called on CPS to record events and gatherings, and the Historical Society’s collection may be the only place some of these photos survive.
The collection came to the Historical Society in a series of twenty-four long, wooden boxes that one can’t help but call “coffins.” In each coffin, which is labeled by the year of the photographs contained inside, photographs are divided by their subject or “job.”
Each job was given a number corresponding to the year it was taken and its sequential order. For example, job number 84023 would be the twenty third job fulfilled by CPS in 1984. More than one photograph was taken at many of the jobs, so inventorying this collection means that each job needs to be viewed individually. There are often multiple copies of an image—sometimes there are just one or two, but sometimes there are as many as seventy copies!
The next step of the project is to inventory the other photographs and materials associated with Capitol Photo Service. In addition to the coffins, the Historical Society holds several more boxes of smaller prints and negatives, ephemera, framed images, and some of the panoramic camera equipment that Ed Segal used. The coffins are the biggest portion of the collection and also the biggest challenge to inventory, so they have been tackled first.
As with most things—and definitely for a behemoth of a collection like this—knowing is half the battle. While looking through thousands of photographs can at times seem a little tedious, it is the hidden gems of this project that have really made it worthwhile. Because the CPS collection has such intense local relevance to the D.C. community, we hope that when the project is finally fully cataloged local residents will be able to discover another part of their family and their city’s past.