Carol M. Highsmith America LLC Information

For more than 40 years, Carol Highsmith has photographed the cities, neighborhoods, landscapes, memorials, and ordinary people of America. Inspired by pioneer photographer Frances Benjamin Johnston, who captured an American panoply over a remarkable 60-year career, and Dorothea Lange, whose Great Depression photographs included the unforgettable “Migrant Mother,” Highsmith is donating her life’s collection of more than 100,000 photographs – copyright-free – to the Carol M. Highsmith Archive at the renowned Library of Congress, and thus to the American people. When the Library’s Web site marked National Women’s History Month, it featured four luminaries. One was Carol M. Highsmith. Her work has been showcased by Random House, National Geographic, and Preservation Press in more than 50 coffee-table books, 1.5 million copies of which have been sold. In 2007, the American Institute of Architects selected her work to depict all 150 of the nation’s greatest architectural sites. For the National Park Service, Highsmith has photographically inventoried the belongings of four presidents and other luminaries, including Carl Sandburg, Robert E. Lee, and Frederick Douglass. Each year, she photographs monumental federal buildings and their unparalleled art; for this work, the General Services Administration recently presented Highsmith with its prestigious Design Award. And she has extensively recorded images of National Trust for Historic Preservation properties, including the Farnsworth House, Glass House, and Drayton Hall. “I work every day with a heartfelt commitment to documenting the living history and built environment of our times,” Highsmith says. “I consider my work an indestructible record of our vast nation, including sites that are fast fading, even disappearing, in the wake of growth, development, and decay.”