smithsonian's first photographer

2551282908_8a4e4fdde2 2551346742_1235f6b17b 2575901266_3f91f423b7 2550594367_6d1f722aa3 These amazing photographs are from this Smithsonian Institution flickr set. Thomas Smillie was the Smithsonian's first photographer. These photos are his documentations of Smithsonian life, cataloging much of the institution's physical collections and museum installations. Smillie used blue cyanotypes to keep track of the glass-plate negatives his staff made, in part because the medium presented a quick and inexpensive way to create photographic prints. The bulky glass negatives were numbered and filed.