Photographs made by Hamilton Wright Jr. in Egypt, South Africa, India, Lebanon, Taiwan, the Philippines, Korea, Hong Kong, Holland, Italy, Mexico, Venezuela, Ecuador, Chile, Bolivia, Haiti, the Virgin Islands, Canada, Alaska, Colorado, and New Hampshire. They include images of modern and ancient structures and monuments, artifacts, industries, cities, markets, caves, festivals, beaches, scenery, and sporting events. Most appear to have been made for the Hamilton Wright Organization, an international agency that made films and photographs to support public relations campaigns of foreign governments. Also included are some lantern slides depicting historical sites in Egypt, directed by Hamilton Wright, Sr., and one-sheets for motion picture films produced by the Hamilton Wright Organization. Additional material includes slide narration for a lecture and short news stories relating to the images in the collection.
Biographical/Historical note:
In 1908, Hamilton Wright Sr. founded the Hamilton Wright Organization, a public relations firm that specialized in making travelog and newsreel film and distributing it to motion picture houses around the world, often on behalf of domestic and foreign governments. Wright's son, Hamilton Wright Jr., managed the company after his father and expanded it's work. In 1963, a Senate committee criticized the Hamilton Wright Organization for hosting press junkets and distributing its photographs, newsreels, and stories in American news media without reporting its sources. The Hamilton Wright Organization was closed by Hamilton Wright Jr.'s son in the late 1960s.
Local Call Number(s):
NAA Photo Lot 76-35
Location of Other Archival Materials:
Films by the Hamilton Wright Organization can be found in the Human Studies Film Archive in HSFA 94.19.
The Film and Television Archive at the University of California at Los Angeles holds the motion picture film and related material of the Hamilton Wright Organization.
Margaret Casey Gates. Margaret Casey Gates sketchbook, 1934 through 1940. Margaret Casey Gates papers, 1934-1988. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
The Caribbean as Columbus saw it, by Samuel Eliot Morison and Mauricio Obregón. Photos. by David L. Crofoot, Cristina Martinez-Irujo de Obregón, members of the Harvard Columbus Expedition, and other friends
A historical account of St. Thomas, W.I., with its rise and progress in commerce; missions and churches; climate and its adaptation to invalids; geological structure; natural history, and botany; and incidental notices of St. Croix and St. Johns; slave insurrections in these islands; emancipation and present condition of laboring classes. By John P. Knox
