Industry Press Releases

National Geographic Stock: Vintage Collection now available at The Granger Collection

Jul 13. 2012
11:07
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CEPIC_2
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Source: The Granger Collection

Thousands of images from the National Geographic Stock: Vintage Collection are now available at The Granger Collection.

The rare historical catalogue, part of the National Geographic Image Collection, documents the world and its inhabitants, including indigenous people, their cultures, the environment, and the natural world from the 1880s through the 1970s.

The National Geographic Image Collection, based at National Geographic Society headquarters in Washington, D.C., houses an immense repository of images dating back to the Society’s founding in 1888. The vintage collection within it numbers over 600,000 images—including one of the world’s largest collections of Autochromes, the first viable form of color photography, as well as photographs by Alexander Graham Bell, a founding member of the National Geographic Society. Countless artists and pioneering travel photographers and photojournalists are also represented, such as Louis Agassiz Fuertes, Maynard Owen Williams, and Luis Marden.

George Shiras III was another of National Geographic magazine’s illustrious early contributors. A wildlife enthusiast and an inventor, Shiras devised an elaborate flash system to photograph animals in their natural habitats at night. These images were the first nighttime flash photos of animals ever taken. In 1905, Shiras met with Gil Grosvenor, Director and Editor of the National Geographic Society and its magazine, prepared with a box of these photos. Grosvenor was impressed and printed Shiras’ images and article titled "Hunting Wild Game with Flashlight and Camera" in the July 1906 issue of National Geographic. The story was such a hit that Shiras and the magazine received a letter of praise from none other than President Teddy Roosevelt.

You won’t find a more exotic or culturally compelling vintage collection anywhere, says Lila Dlaboha, Managing Director of The Granger Collection. The magazine has always been a source of discovery and wonder for children and adults alike, she continues. It is the granddaddy of photojournalism flung far and wide, whose mission was to explore the world we live in: being vis-á-vis with a dragonfly, Balinese dancers in gilded costumes, cone dwellings of Asia Minor, Indian sadhus resting on a bed of nails, penetrating portraits of native peoples—whose stark sophistication was later evoked in the portraiture of Richard Avedon. It is a stunning collection of photographic and social history.

New images from the National Geographic Stock: Vintage Collection will be added to The Granger Collection database on a periodic basis as the content is digitized.

  • A selection may be viewed by clicking here.
  • About The Granger Collection

For nearly a half-century as the most convenient and reliable source for the history of the world in pictures, The Granger Collection holds more than six million images spanning more than 25,000 years of world history, from before the Stone Age to the dawn of the Space Age. The Granger Collection specializes in the history of people, places, things, and events represented in a variety of mediums including photographs, paintings, engravings, lithographs, and more.