Oscars: Photographs

The MGM collection is the largest individual collection at over one million items.

This came in 970 unorganised boxes, and took about 12 years of part time staff time to shape into the useable resource it represents today.

The MGM collection is made up of modern archival prints made directly from nitrate negatives, and original prints.

Here are production stills from the 1921 Rudolph Valentino film The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse. These are some of the many modern archival prints the library has had produced from the nitrate negatives received.

Some original prints from Todd Browning's Freaks, 1932.

They are quite excellent.

Oscars: Photographs

The photograph collection stands at about ten million.
Some of these are art prints and negatives directly from studios such as MGM, RKO, Paramount, and a recent large acquisition from United Artists.
Others have come from personal collections such as those of John Hess, John Engstead, and Edward Steichen.

The photos do not always arrive in good shape.
Many have to be rewashed, flattened, put in an auto dryer. Film emulsion and the paper behave differently, so the library stores them face to face, back to back to keep like materials with like. With the carefully controlled conditions in the stacks there is no chance of moisture sticking them together, and they stay nice and flat. Apparently stored in the same direction (still practiced in some collections) they warp into a giant C. Not so good.