Center For Creative Photography

Mission & Vision

By actively collecting, preserving, presenting, and interpreting photographic collections of extraordinary quality, the Center can stimulate the imagination, advance scholarship, and encourage creativity. The Center for Creative Photography is dedicated to the enjoyment and appreciation of works of art, with the belief that meaningful engagement with the work of some of the world’s greatest photographers can stimulate discussion, inquiry, and understanding.

Overview

The Center for Creative Photography, 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 239 archival collections. Among these are some of the most recognizable names in 20th center North American photography: W. Eugene Smith, Lola Alvarez Bravo, Edward Weston, and Garry Winogrand. Altogether there are over five 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 acquired 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.