The Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives (EEPA), National Museum of African Art announced The Stephen Grant Postcard Collection Digitization Project, a collaborative cataloguing and digitization project with the Smithsonian’s Digitization Program Office (DPO). This collection is fully accessible to the general public in late 2020 or early 2021.

Collected by donor Stephen Grant, this postcard collection consists of over 7500 historic postcards from Egypt, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea and Senegal produced during the golden era of postcards, c. 1900 – 1920s. The collection features a range of subjects and provides evidence of early photographic processes and printing techniques that allowed the mass circulation of postcards inside and outside Africa. Many postcards carried stamps and hand-written messages sent to friends and family in Europe and the United States. Bearing the names of African photographers and studios long forgotten, these postcards have become key visual resources in excavating the hidden histories of African photography.

The EEPA Historic Postcard Collection consists of over 20,000 postcards from every country and region of Africa. We continue to build this collection with the support of individual donors like Stephen Grant. If you are interested in donating your old postcards of Africa to the National Museum of African Art, please contact EEPA at elisofonarchives.si.edu. Thank you for your support!

Access to Photographic Archives

Records of the collections of the Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives are accessible online through the Collections Search Center.

Smithsonian Mass Digitization Projecton on Facebook and Twitter

National Museum of African Art 

Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives

The Stephen Grant Postcard Collection Digitization Project

 

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