The Colorado 20th Century Project will focus on the following collections of photographs that document the modern face of Colorado and the American West in the twentieth century:

• Photos taken by David DeHarport (1921-2001), an archaeologist, anthropologist, and photographer of Colorado’s eastern plains
• The largest known collection of the work of modernist photographer Winter Prather (1926-2005)
• The complete collection of the Aultman Studio, Colorado’s longest-running photography studio, which operated in Trinidad from 1890-2000
• The work of National Geographic photographer Fred Payne Clatworthy (1875-1953), who ran a studio in Estes Park from 1905-1953 and was a master of the autochrome, a rare early color process (a few of Clatworthy’s autochromes of Rocky Mountain National Park are currently on display in History Colorado’s “We Love Rocky Mountain National Park” exhibit, in celebration of the park’s 100th birthday)

These four collections were chosen for the NHPRC grant project because they document the significant changes in industry, community, demographics, and economics that Colorado faced during the twentieth-century.  Just a few of the topics represented in the photos are the effects of economic depression on Colorado’s eastern plains communities in the mid-century, the growth of Denver as an industrial hub, the vibrant ethnic diversity of our state, and the development of tourism to Colorado’s mountain areas.  Looked at together, the photos in the Colorado 20th-Century Photography Collections Project represent the American West in microcosm in the twentieth-century – particularly the struggle we faced (and continue to face) in our region between embracing modern growth and conserving cultural and natural history.

The Photography Department also chose these collections for the grant project because they are “hidden collections.”  In plain terms, this means that there is currently little to no way for the public to look at these photos, do research in the collections, or reproduce them for use in books or exhibitions.  We don’t know exactly what’s in these collections.  There are either no complete guides or inventories.  The photos in these collections are either completely unorganized and uncataloged or are only partially cataloged.  (For instance, many visitors are familiar with the Aultman collection, due to almost 2,000 Aultman studio photos from the History Colorado collections that are currently on the Denver Public Library Digital Collections website.  But did you know that there are at least 48,000 more photos in that collection?) And this is lack of access is a problem, because not only do these collections contain works by four of Colorado’s most significant modern photographers,  but their work documents contemporary Colorado in a way none of History Colorado’s other photo collections currently do.

Photography Department staff will begin work on the Colorado 20th-Century Photography Collections Project in August 2015, and the project will be completed in June 2017.  Over the next two years, the NHPRC grant award will allow us to provide comprehensive online access to the David DeHarport, Winter Prather, Aultman Studio, and Fred Payne Clatworthy collections.  We will organize all the collections to make them available for research use, create guides to the collections that we’ll post online, and digitize selections from each collection that we’ll upload to the History Colorado Online Collection website.  Along the way, we’ll also be keeping you updated about the progress of the project and the fun stuff we find in the collections via this blog and History Colorado’s History Colorado on Facebook page.

So keep an eye out for photos from the Colorado 20th-Century Photography Collections Project to start appearing here, on Facebook, in our library catalog, and on the History Colorado Online Collection website.  We’re excited to share them with you.

Thank you, NHPRC!