Guide to the Oliver F. Atkins photograph collection, 1943-1975

Oliver F. Atkins photograph C0036

Biographical Information

Oliver F. Atkins was born February 18, 1916 in Hyde Park, Massachusetts. He earned a B.A. in Journalism from the University of Alabama in 1938, and accepted a position with the Birmingham Post as a staff photographer. Within two years he became chief photographer for the Scripps Howard-owned paper. In 1940, he joined the Washington Daily News where he remained until 1942 and the outbreak of World War II. During the war, he served as a correspondent and photographer for the American Red Cross covering the African campaign, the invasions of Sicily, southern Italy, southern France, and Germany. After the war, Atkins joined the staff of the Saturday Evening Post. As the Washington correspondent for the Post, he photographed many important leaders of the United States and the world. Among them were Harry S Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Richard M. Nixon, John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., Winston Churchill, Gamel Nasser, Nikita Kruschev, Josip B. Tito, and Jawaharlal Nehru. He was the Post's Far East correspondent in 1951, and also enjoyed a personal and working relationship with the magazine's famous illustrator, Norman Rockwell.

In 1969, Atkins became the personal photographer of President Richard M. Nixon and chief White House photographer. Of his many images of Nixon, the series documenting the meeting of December 18, 1970 with Elvis Presley is the most famous and the most requested. After Nixon's resignation in 1974, Atkins became vice president of Curtis Publishing Company of Indianapolis and remained there until his death in 1977. Ollie Atkins's awards include the White House News Photographers' Association Grand Award, the Graflex All American Photo Contest Portrait Award, and the National Press Photographers' Association Personalities Award. Books by Ollie Atkins include Camera on Assignment (co-written with Charles Baptie, 1957), and The White House Years: Triumph and Tragedy (1977). He also contributed to William Safire's Eye on Nixon (1972).

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Scope and Content

The Atkins collection consists of approximately 60,000 images that extensively document American political and cultural history from the 1940s through the 1970s. Most of the images that document American political life date from the early 1960s through the mid-1970s when Atkins worked as a photographer for the Saturday Evening Post and then later as the personal photographer to President Richard M. Nixon. The bulk of the American cultural documentation is from Atkins' work in the 1950s and early 1960s on specific stories for the Saturday Evening Post, and these stories cover other areas of the United States, particularly the Southeast up through the Northeast coast. There are also a number of international sets of images from Korea, Africa, and India. The collection consists largely of 8x10" and l3x10" color and black and white prints and 35mm and 4x5" black and white negatives. There are also a number of slides, contact sheets, and oversize matted prints. The collection also includes some correspondence and other documentation on Atkins' work and travel abroad.

Series 1 contains almost all of the prints in the collection. The prints document Atkins' positions as a photographer for the Saturday Evening Post and the personal photographer to President Richard M. Nixon. Many of the negatives of the prints in the first subseries can be found in Series 2 and 3. Subseries 1.1 consists largely of prints from Atkins work as a photographer for the Saturday Evening Post in Washington, D.C. There are also photographs from Saturday Evening Post stories that Atkins contributed to and those folders are labeled with the title of the article. The scope notes provide additional information about the subjects of the photographs and the locations when the folder titles are not descriptive enough. Subseries 1.2 consists of 8x10" prints from Atkins' work as the personal photographer to President Richard M. Nixon. The images document life in the White House, press conferences, visiting foreign leaders, presidential visits abroad, vacations, and Nixon's final days in office following his resignation. There are also numerous photographs of the Nixon's wife, Pat, and his daughters, Julie and Tricia. Most of the photographs are in color. Subseries 1.3 consists of both 8x10" and 11x14" prints arranged chronologically from Atkins' work as the personal photographer to President Richard M. Nixon. The prints cover much of the same subject matter as in subseries 1.2 and in some cases are duplicates. Most of the prints are black and white.

Series 2 contains 4x5" negatives created during Atkins's tenure as a photographer for the Saturday Evening Post, and most of the photographs are grouped together by story title. Some of the prints made from the negatives can be found in Subseries 1.1. Subjects include American political figures, such as Dwight D. Eisenhower, Alben W. Barkley, George Marshall, and Tom Connally; Washington, D.C., sites, such as the White House, the Library of Congress, and Howard University; and religious leaders, such as Ezra Taft Benson and Prophet Jones. Other subjects include American businessmen, military figures, and average citizens. Folder numbers refer to numbered "packets" containing multiple negatives of the same subject. Box 58 contains negatives other than 4x5" that could not be housed in the same containers. Some of these negatives are from the same stories and have the same packet numbering. Detailed caption descriptions for these packets can be found in Series 4.

Series 3 contains 35mm negatives, 4x5" negatives, contact sheets, and slides that Atkins created while he worked for the Saturday Evening Post in the 1950s and 1960s as well as some images from work he did during World War II. Prints from these images can be found in Series 1, and there are some copies of negatives that are in Series 4. Subseries 3.1 is arranged in chronological order and appears to be largely from Atkins' Washington File, a collection of images he maintained from various assignments. Subjects photographed during the early 1960s include the President John F. Kennedy and his cabinet, including Robert F. Kennedy; Jacqueline Kennedy; astronauts such as John Glenn and Alan Shepard; Senators and Representatives; protests and demonstrations such as the "March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom", with Martin Luther King, Jr.; and John F. Kennedy's inauguration and funeral. Subjects photographed during the mid-to-late 1960s include President Lyndon B. Johnson and his cabinet, including Robert S. McNamara and Dean Rusk; Nelson A. Rockefeller; Ladybird Johnson; Senators and Representatives; Malcolm X; the signing of the Civil Rights Bill with Martin Luther King, Jr.; astronauts Gus Grissom, John Young, and John Glenn; and protests and demonstrations, including the "Poor People's Campaign", with Jesse Jackson, Ralph Abernathy, and Coretta Scott King. Subseries 3.2 is arranged in alphabetical order. Subjects include Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon B. Johnson, along with their cabinet members and families. Other political figures or events include United States Senators and Congressmen, such as Barry Goldwater, J. William Fulbright, and Margaret Chase Smith, and the Democratic and Republican National Conventions from 1956-1968. Other subjects include the Korean War and other overseas locales such as Africa, Cuba, India, New Zealand, and Yugoslavia; Washington, D.C., landmarks include the U.S. Capitol Building, the U.S. Supreme Court Building, the State Department Building, and the White House. As in Subseries 1.1 and Series 2, multiple folder titles are based on Saturday Evening Post story titles.

Series 4 contains correspondence, awards, press travel packets, copies of images for exhibits and reference use, and a photograph assignment on the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia. Of particular interest in the correspondence are letters between Atkins and the Saturday Evening Post about his work and other matters. Note that there is also correspondence and notes throughout the folders in the Series 3. The press packets document Nixon's travel abroad during his presidency and can be used in conjunction with the Nixon subject prints in Series 1. There are also publications that feature photographs by Atkins.

Series 5 contains mat photographs that span Atkins entire career from World War II to the White House. Subjects include World War II in Europe, the Korean War, and scenes from Africa, India, and the Middle East. Also pictured are American political figures such as Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Richard M. Nixon. Other subjects include protests on the National Mall, landmarks in Washington, D.C., and New York City, coal miners, and Fidel Castro.

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Arrangement

Organized into five series:

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Restrictions

Access Restrictions

There are no access restrictions.

Use Restrictions

George Mason University Libraries does not hold copyright for images taken for hire by Oliver Atkins. Some images may be restricted to personal, non-commercial use only. Images taken while Oliver Atkins was the White House Photographer are in the public domain. For permission to publish, contact the Special Collections Research Center.

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Related Material

Special Collections and Archives also holds many other photograph collections.

The National Archives and Records Administration holds the negatives and contact sheets of the images contained in Subseries 1.2 and 1.3.

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Index Terms

Persons:

Corporate Names:

Geographical Names:

Subjects:

Document Types:

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Administrative Information

Alternative Form Available

Portions of the Atkins collection are available online through the Oliver F. Atkins Photograph Collection and the 1972 Richard Nixon Campaign Photographs.

Preferred Citation

Oliver F. Atkins photograph collection, C0036, Special Collections and Archives, George Mason University Libraries.

Acquisition Information

Donated by Marjorie Atkins in 1978 and 1987.

Processing Information

Processed by Special Collections and Archives staff. Additional processing by Jordan Patty, Gary Smith, and Shira Loev in 2010-2011. EAD markup completed by Jordan Patty and Shira Loev in 2011.

While reprocessing the collection, staff attempted to retain much of the same organization and arrangement as possible since the Atkins collection has been heavily used by researchers over the past several decades. However, it was necessary to update some of the folder titles for clarity and also merge some of the folders that contained similar subject matter. Many of the folders in Series 3 still contain acid-free paper with numbering that matches the old arrangement

This collection was reprocessed in 2010-2011 using funds from a National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) Detailed Processing Grant.

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Contents List