Washington DC's National Gallery of Art has recently acquired the library of noted photography and photobook collector, designer, and author Manfred Heiting. The Heiting Library, which includes more than 4,500 items, will expand the National Gallery’s remarkable holdings of illustrated books, bound volumes of photographs, and photobooks from around the world and 
complement its collection of photographs. Made possible in part by a gift from Heiting, this acquisition also underscores the museum’s commitment to supporting photography research and scholarship and continuing to expand the breadth and depth of the nation’s art and research collections. Of particular note to BPH is Anna Atkin's British Algae.
At the core of the Heiting Library is an extraordinary concentration of bound volumes of 19th-century photographs and 20th-century photobooks of exceptional quality, scope, and significance. These works, along with earlier 16th- to 19th-century publications adorned with woodcuts, engravings, and etchings, enable the Heiting Library to offer many insights into the development of illustrated books. Notably, the collection shows how earlier examples propelled the rise of the groundbreaking photographically illustrated European, American, Japanese, and Soviet modernist photobooks of the 1920s through the 1970s. The Heiting Library also includes pioneering examples of late 19th- and 20th-century art and design periodicals and rare 20th-century publications from Iran, China, and Latin America.
“The Heiting Library presents an exciting opportunity for the National Gallery to deepen public understanding and appreciation of our artistic and cultural history, enabling our visitors to access foundational examples of photobooks, illustrated books, and periodicals,” said Kaywin Feldman, director of the National Gallery of Art. “These extraordinary objects demonstrate the global reach of photography, and they highlight the deep connection between photography and modern art. We are grateful to Manfred Heiting and his family for the care they took in building this unparalleled resource and for their generosity, which made this acquisition possible. By joining the ranks of those who have contributed to the National Gallery’s legacy of artistic preservation and cultural enrichment, Mr. Heiting becomes part of a storied group of dedicated patrons and benefactors. We look forward to sharing these objects more broadly as part of the nation’s collection.”
As he built his collection over the last 35 years, Heiting’s primary goal was to demonstrate that the illustrated book was a work of art. He focused not just on the artists whose practice was illustrated but on the entire team—including authors, designers, typographers, printers, publishers, and bookbinders—who transformed an idea into an artwork that could be disseminated around the world. His collection includes pristine copies of seminal volumes as well as deluxe editions, often signed, with extra plates or additional printed information that give further understanding to the scope, importance, and distinction of the publication.
Illustrated books have played an essential role in shaping humanity’s understanding of the world since the 16th century. Photobooks, which are characterized by the careful sequencing and editing of photographic images to convey visual arguments, expanded this role in the 19th and 20th centuries by challenging traditional ways of reading and seeing. They are now a dominant form of presentation and circulation of photographic images and are a vital mode of artistic expression for contemporary photographers.
The acquisition of the Heiting Library brings to the National Gallery important bound volumes of photographs, including works by women photographers, and books exploring prescient concepts like the environment, land use, European colonial power, and global exchange. It also gives the museum one of the most comprehensive collections of Japanese photobooks in the world and transforms the museum’s ability to convey the crucial impact of Japanese photography on global art and culture.
This acquisition further complements the National Gallery’s 19th- and 20th-century photography collection by allowing scholars, researchers, and the public to view and study original prints along with their published reproductions. Especially in the 20th century, photographers often aspired to have their pictures published in books, which enabled their art to circulate around the world.
Heiting has been a long time collector of photography and photography books. When he began collecting in the 1970s, he first focused on prints, but in 2002, after selling the majority of his collection to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), he shifted to photobooks. Since then, he had acquired a collection that traced the history of photobook publishing from the late nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth century. In 2012, the MFA acquired about 24,000 of the books. A few thousand items had already been transferred to the museum, the remainder were at the Heiting's home for research purposes until 2023, but were destroyed in the 2018 Woolsey California wildfire (see links below).
Highlights from The Heiting Library
- Adriaen Pietersz van de Venne and Jacob Cats, Proteus, ofte, Minne-beelden verandert in sinne-beelden (1627 [1618]). One of the few copies with Adriaen van de Venne’s illustrations hand-colored by a contemporary hand, possibly Van de Venne himself. This is the first edition to include the first two engravings and Cats’s Dutch poetry alongside his prose, and the only edition of these emblem books printed in the larger quarto format.
Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, Historique et description der procédés de Daguerréotype et du diorama (1839). This is the first edition, first issue, first printing, and one of only three known copies of Daguerre’s manual for his process of photography, issued on August 20, 1839.- Anna Atkins, Photographs of British Algae (1843–1850). A milestone in the history of photography, this work is considered the first photographically printed and illustrated book. Issued in fascicles, it contains 71 cyanotype prints, a process invented by Sir John Herschel in 1842.
- Gustave Le Gray, Souvenirs du Camp de Châlons (1857). A unique album given by Emperor Napoleon III to his highest-ranking officer, Comte Auguste Regnaud de Saint-Jean d’Angély, the commander in chief of the Imperial Guard and marshal of France, it includes 66 albumen prints of Le Gray’s photographs of the Imperial Guard’s exercises at the inauguration of the Camp de Châlons, more than any of the other six copies of the “grand albums” known to exist.
- Edward Steichen and Alfred Stieglitz, The Steichen Book (1906). Inscribed by Stieglitz to his friend Heinrich Kühn, this bound volume of photogravures was later acquired from the Kühn family by the equally famous German photographer Otto Steinert, who gave it to his assistant a few days before he died.
- Adolph de Meyer, Le prelude à L’Après-midi d’un faune (1914). One of only seven known copies of de Meyer’s sumptuous, handcrafted book on the Ballets Russes’s scandalous production of Vaslav Nijinsky’s L’après-midi d’un faune. De Meyer claimed that the book was on board a ship bound for New York that was sunk by a German submarine, but it is also possible that the full edition was never printed.
- Alfred Stieglitz, Agnes Ernst Meyer, Marius de Zayas, and Paul Haviland, 291 (March 1915–February 1916). Stieglitz sent this deluxe edition of his avant-garde magazine, which included original artwork, essays, and poems by Francis Picabia, John Marin, Max Jacob, de Zayas, Stieglitz, and others, to Georgia O’Keeffe while she was teaching in Canyon, Texas. She kept it until her death in 1986.
- Fukuhara Shinzō, Pari to Seinu (1922). This exceedingly rare publication by Fukuhara, one of the most influential Japanese modernist photographers, is the main source of information on his early pictorial photographs; most of his other work was destroyed in the Great Kanto earthquake of 1923.
- Louis Aragon, Une vague de rêves (1924/1938). A special edition with unique original binding by Paul Bonet using original photographs on the recto and verso. He made only six special covers, all slightly different in 1934, 1938, 1939, 1942, and 1962.
- CCCP na stroika (USSR in Construction) (1935). A monthly magazine, USSR in Construction brought together some of the most celebrated Soviet artists of the time, including El Lissitzsky, Nikolai Troshin, Alexsandr Rodchenko, and Varvara Stepanova, who used photographs to promote the vast transformation of their built environment in the 1930s. A deluxe annual edition printed on heavier paper and intended for members of the Politburo, this 1935 annual has some of Rodchenko’s and Stepanova’s most celebrated designs, including the famous “parachute issue,” with a printed, folded-up parachute designed by Rodchenko.
- Laure Albin Guillot, La Cantate du Narcisse (1936). From an edition of eight, this portfolio of 20 original Fresson charcoal prints illustrates Paul Valéry’s poem of the same title with innovative photographs of nudes by Albin Guillot.
Barbara Brändli, Sistema nervioso (Nervous System) (1975). An innovative photobook described as a visual poem to the city of Caracas by the Swiss-born Venezuelan photographer Brändli, Sistema nervioso was made in collaboration with screenwriter Román Chalbaud and artistic director John Lange, both Venezuelan, and is recognized as one of the most important photobooks of the 20th century.- Kitajima Keizō, Photo Express Tokyo, Nos. 1–12 (1979). These booklets were published to accompany Kitajima’s legendary monthly exhibitions at the CAMP gallery in Tokyo in 1979, in which he covered every inch of the gallery walls with his photographs.
About the National Gallery of Art Library
The National Gallery of Art Library contains a collection of more than 500,000 books and periodicals on the history, theory, and criticism of art and architecture, and an extensive image collection of more than 16 million single images. The general collection includes a broad selection of monographs on individual artists; international exhibition, museum, and private collection catalogs; and European and American auction catalogs from the 18th century to the present. The library’s special collections include rare collection catalogs, biographies of artists, festival books, emblem books, artist books, travel literature, and manuals on technique and materials, as well as books on architecture, color theory, and the early history of photography. The image collection’s strengths include American, Dutch, French, and Italian art, the arts of Asia, and the architecture of France, Italy, and Germany. Since 1990, the library has significantly expanded its holdings of books and periodicals related to photography. The library and image collections are available for study by any individual, including staff and interns of the National Gallery, members of the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, and the broader scholarly and artistic community.
About the National Gallery’s Collection of Photographs
The National Gallery began to collect photographs in 1990 and has since established one of the most distinguished collections of photographs and programs for photography in the world, with numerous groundbreaking and award-winning exhibitions and publications. The collection now includes more than 23,000 works made from 1839 to the present by photographers working around the world. It has deep, often unrivaled holdings of work by Robert Adams, Ilse Bing, Walker Evans, Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, Allen Ginsberg, Graciela Iturbide, André Kertész, Dorothea Lange, Eadweard Muybridge, Gordon Parks, Alfred Stieglitz, and Paul Strand, among others, as well as strong holdings of press photographs, snapshots and other vernacular photographs, and a significant collection of 19th- and early 20th-century photographs of and by African Americans. It also includes works by many of the photographers whose books are included in the Heiting Collection.
Search the Library collections here: https://library.nga.gov/discovery/search?vid=01NGA_INST:NGA&lang=en
Works in the National Gallery’s collection of photographs can be viewed by appointment. Contact photographs@nga.gov or 202-842-6144.
See also: https://www.1854.photography/2018/11/heiting-collection-destroyed/ and https://www.artforum.com/news/major-collection-of-photobooks-destroyed-in-california-wildfire-241390/
Images (top to bottom):
Gustave Le Gray, Souvenirs du Camp de Châlons, 1857, National Gallery of Art Library, Manfred Heiting Library. Image courtesy of Manfred Heiting
Anna Atkins, Photographs of British Algae, 1843–1850, National Gallery of Art Library, Manfred Heiting Library. Image courtesy of Manfred Heiting
Kitajima Keizō, Photo Express Tokyo, Nos. 1–12, 1979, National Gallery of Art Library, Manfred Heiting Library. Image courtesy of Manfred Heiting
Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, Historique et description der procédés de Daguerréotype et du diorama, 1839, National Gallery of Art Library, Manfred Heiting Library. Image courtesy of Manfred Heiting
Barbara Brändli, Sistema nervioso (Nervous System), 1975, National Gallery of Art Library, Manfred Heiting Library
