Photo Craftsmen Photograph Collection, 1946-1999 | Sargeant Memorial Collection

Photo Craftsmen was a Norfolk commercial photography company that opened in 1946 at 512 West Olney Road. Jim Barry was the proprietor. The company moved to 1043 West 45th Street by 1958, and relocated to 251 West Bute Street by 1961. The company again relocated, to 420 West Bute Street by 1966, and then to its final location at 415 West York Street by 1978. When Barry died in 1976 the company was purchased by employee Len Rothman. Rothman changed the company name to Len Rothman Photography in the late 1990s. The company closed in the early 2000s.

The company donated its remaining photo negatives and associated materials to the Sargeant Memorial Collection in 2016. The collection includes approximately 15,000 photographic negatives (black & white and color, in various formats) and rolled aerial photographic negatives; original, annotated negative sleeves; company ledgers with information on date, subject and client for each negative; aerial photography maps; and aerial camera equipment.

The collection offers a rich photographic record of the Tidewater area. The negatives and prints cover a wide range of subjects, including historic buildings and residential developments, major construction and infrastructure projects, industrial sites, street and harbor scenes, and more intimate scenes of weddings and social events. Notably, about half of the collection consists of aerial photographs, which extensively document the development of area cities and county lands after World War Two.

Records included in the donation show that the company did most of its photographic work on contract, either for local government agencies such as the Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority, corporations and local businesses, or individual customers.

The content of the Photo Craftsmen collection in many ways mirrors the evolution of post-war Tidewater. Most of the company’s photographs from the 1940s and early 1950s focus on scenes around downtown Norfolk and industrial sites along the Elizabeth River. By the mid-1950s, the photographs begin to document the sweeping redevelopment of urban residential areas in local cities, as well as the rise of residential and commercial areas in the former Norfolk and Princess Anne counties. Photographs through the 1960s continue to record this suburbanization, and also detail major transportation projects across the region, such as new highways and tunnels. By the later 1960s, the collection increasingly includes private photographic work, such as weddings, portraiture, and photographs for use in legal actions. Throughout the years, the collection is leavened by images of the everyday life—beach scenes, sailboat races, business openings, sporting events—that help capture a sense of mid-century Tidewater.

Most of the collection’s negatives are large format (4"x5" or larger), so provide detailed, high-quality images of their subjects. Most are in black and white, although Photo Craftsmen began to make significant use of color film by the late 1960s.