Discussing East Side rent strike. 1908 Jan. Prints and Photographs Division. LC-USZ62-119031. bibliographic record

The archive of one of America's earliest news photo agencies, the George Grantham Bain Collection (100,000 photographic prints and negatives, ca. 1910-22), provides evidence of the many ways in which women made the news in the early decades of the twentieth century. The collection includes photographs of:

• women's suffrage activities
• depictions of immigrant women
• women engaging in various sports and physical education activities
• recreational activities of upper-class women
• striking women workers in the pre-World War I era
• women workers during World War I.

Although Bain collected images from publications across the United States that subscribed to his photo service, a large proportion of the photographs were produced under his direction and focus primarily on activities in New York City and, to a lesser extent, the East Coast.

Searching the Collection

Streetcars - getting on Broadway car. 1913 July 11. George Grantham Bain Collection (Library of Congress). Prints and Photographs Division. LC-USZ62-91532. full caption | bibliographic record

A portion of the negatives and prints can be searched in the Prints and Photographs Online Catalog, where the collection has its own listing. Digitized images accompany most online records.

To look for images for which no online records exists, onsite researchers can:

• consult the Divisional Catalog for images grouped by subject into LOTs; submit a call slip to have desired LOTs retrieved
• consult the Biographical File, where many of the portraits in the collection have been filed
• find references to unprinted negatives in the Biographical Index; as the original glass negatives cannot be served, photographic copies of unprinted negatives must be ordered sight unseen.

Go to the Prints and Photographs Online Catalog (PPOC)