Carol M. Highsmith (born 1946) is a photographer, author, and publisher
who has photographed all 50 of the United States, the District of
Columbia, and Puerto Rico for 30 years. She specializes in documenting
architecture, including the monumental, the everyday and the whimsical.
Highsmith is donating her life’s work of more than 100,000 images,
copyright-free, to the Library of Congress, which established a rare
one-person archive. The Carol M. Highsmith collection is one of six
featured collections in the Library's Print and Photographs division.
The
Carol M. Highsmith collection is one of six featured collections in the
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. There are 15
million images in the Library of Congress collection.
In 2009, the Library of Congress acquired Carol Highsmith's 21st Century
America "born digital" collection (photographs that originated in the
digital format rather than as film transferred to digital) and expect it
to grow to the largest photographic born digital collection at the
Library of Congress. This archive, "Carol M. Highsmith’s America:
Documenting the 21st Century", includes 1,000 images taken across the
country. The collection emphasizes what Highsmith calls "Disappearing
America," including 200 shots taken along U.S. Route 66 in Arizona, New
Mexico, Texas, and Oklahoma.
