This is an assortment of photographs from the Photographic History Collection at the National Museum of American History related to windows. This collection was created in response to the COVID-19 quarantine project known as window serenade.

The photographs in this collection were made by snapshot, amateur, commercial, fine art, and professional photographers. They used windows for a range of artistic, cultural, metaphorical, and other purposes. The photographic processes and formats are as diverse as their uses for display, communication, documentation, entertainment, and expression.

Photographers included in this collection are, Paul Anderson, Max Baur, Paul Caponigro, Mac Cosgrove-Davies, Rudolf Eickemeyer Jr,  Elliot Erwitt, Elizabeth Bliss Howe, Gertrude Kasebier, Frederick Langenheim and Alexander Beckers, Fred Maroon, Joel Meyerowitz, Chuck Mintz, Carl Mydans, Titian Ramsay Peale, Charles Ruston, Kosti Ruohomaa, Burk Uzzle, Diana Walker, Edward Weston, and Joseph Zalensky.

This Learning Lab collection focuses primarily on domestic spaces and photographer's studios rather than storefront windows or notably public spaces. 

For additional images, search collections.si.edu.

Keywords: window, windows, through my window, from my window, sunlit, window light, view from window, out window, looking out of window, window serenade, view to exterior

Historical notes:

The Langenheim and Beckers photograph from their studio window may be the first paper photograph of New York City. 

Titian Ramsay Peale made experimental photographs and views from his Washington, DC home in the 1850s.

Charles Rushton photographed photographers living and working in the American southwest in the 1980s. For more than the few seen in this collection, see the collection Charles Rushton in the Learning Lab.