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Albert Henry Barnes Collection


Elcaine Longmire with rifle

Both a photographer and a painter, Albert Henry Barnes (1876-1920) photographed the people, the cities and the landscapes of the Pacific Northwest. This collection of 302 images gives a representative sample of his work.

Albert Henry Barnes was born in 1876. Well known as both a photographer and a oil painter, he documented images of the landscape, people, and cities and towns of Western Washington around the turn of the 20th century. However, little is known about his life. He apparently operated out of studios both in Parkland and Tacoma. His images appeared in some local newspapers from 1905-1915. He also wrote descriptive articles for photography magazines, railroad publications, and travel books. In 1909, he photographed, wrote and published a work entitled: Sights and scenes from Tacoma to Paradise Park: forty-eight views. In 1911, in collaboration with his friend A.H. Denman, he published his best-known work: "Our Greatest Mountain and Alpine Regions of Wonder". The work contained a number of Barnes landscape photographs, as well as a color reproduction of his painting entitled "Mount Tacoma". In addition to his publication work, he provided services for the Washington State Historical Society such as documenting commemorative services for some of the historical markers erected by the society. Among the photographs in this collection are images of unidentified homesteaders, early scenes in Mount Rainier National Park, the Columbia River Gorge, hotels and lodges in Western Washington, and scenes of Tacoma. He died in Tacoma in 1920.


Haycocks in apple orchard

About the Database

The information for Albert Henry Barnes Collection was researched and prepared by the UW Libraries Special Collections staff in 1999. Research, writing, and image scanning were done by Kristin Kinsey. The database consists of 302 digital images. The photographs were scanned in grayscale using a Microtek Scanmaker 9600L and saved in .jpg format. Some manipulation of the images was done to present the clearest possible digital image. The scanned images were then linked with descriptive data using the UW CONTENT program. The original collection resides in the UW Libraries Special Collections Division as Albert Henry Barnes Collection no. 542.


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