The Photographic Laboratory Collection consists of original negatives, prints, and films documenting the history of Scripps Institution of Oceanography and UC San Diego, including the development of the campus, research, portraits, and expeditions.
SIO Photographic Laboratory Collection, 1900-2002 (bulk 1949-1999) (SAC 44)
OFF-SITE STORAGE: COLLECTION STORED OFF-SITE. ALLOW TWO TO THREE (2-3) WEEKS FOR RETRIEVAL OF MATERIALS.
Restrictions: Original media formats are restricted. Viewing/listening copies may be available for
researchers.
Extent: 39 Linear feet (39 archive boxes, 72 card file boxes, 5 cartons, and 1 cassette box)
Digital Content
A selection of images and recordings from this collection have been digitized.
The Photographic Laboratory (aka Photo Lab) was established in 1949 on the campus of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO) to provide photographic services to the academic community. The first Photo Lab photographer, John MacFall, was hired that year. Photography of an event, building or person could be requested by academic, administrative, or research units; the office that placed an order was then billed.
Beginning in 1958, the Lab began accepting many requests to photograph the construction of new buildings and the growing physical plant of the broader University of California, San Diego campus. There were also increasing numbers of events, programs, faculty, and students to document. Photo Lab photographers captured thousands of images of faculty, staff, and students, in addition to scientific instruments, artifacts and marine specimens, research ships, campus buildings, special events, and even aerial views of SIO, UC San Diego, and surrounding area. Although the Lab's primary output was still photographs, during its early years the Lab also produced several silent films. Many of these early films were taken by Lab personnel John MacFall and James Rupert, who documented oceanographic expeditions.
In 2000, SIO closed the Photo Lab due to the increased use of digital and emerging image technologies. The Lab closed permanently on June 30, 2000. The last photographer was Sue Green. After the Lab's closure, contract photographers were hired as needed to capture images of campus, events, and staff. For photograph processing, personnel at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography were also offered access to other UC San Diego resources, including the UC San Diego School of Medicine's Office of Learning (OLR) Photo Services.
The Photographic Laboratory Collection consists of original negatives, prints, and films documenting the history of Scripps Institution of Oceanography and UC San Diego, including the development of the campus, research, portraits, and expeditions, originally created by the campus Photographic Laboratory (aka Photo Lab). The collection comprises the Lab's photo archive, which included over 25,000 indexed negatives, thousands of prints, and several dozen films. Most of the images date from between 1949 and 2000, the Lab's active years, though it does include some copy prints of earlier negatives that were processed at the Lab by special request.
The bulk of the collection (71 boxes) consists of the master negative archive. The negatives were sleeved by job number, with the general subject of the shoot noted in a running index maintained by Photo Lab personnel. The negatives date from 1949 to 1997 and encompass a wide variety of subjects, from notable people to events in campus history. Many of the negatives have been digitized. The prints in the collection generally complement the negative archive and were processed from the negatives by request. Additional prints and copy negatives have been divided into two additional series, PEOPLE and SUBJECTS, that may overlap with the master negative archive.
The collection is arranged in four series: 1) INDEXED IMAGES, 2) PEOPLE, 3) SUBJECTS, and 4) FILMS.
The Photographic Laboratory maintained a numbered index ledger of all photo orders, and prints and negatives from a specific shoot were normally put into sleeves or folders and marked with the corresponding number. Most images were kept in a master negative file in numbered order, but there was also a separate group of portraits, possibly due to frequent requests for images of individuals. In addition, the Photo Lab would occasionally make copies or extra prints on demand without recording the original index numbers, resulting in some images that can't be identified to a job in the master index. The Photo Lab's archive, including both indexed and unindexed images, and the portraits, were transferred to the University Library in several different accessions between 1985 and 2012.
In 2019, Special Collections & Archives staff began processing the collection to facilitate ease of use and paging, transcribing data and index numbers from the ledgers into a finding aid for the collection. They decided to tidy and retain the two main indexed series: the primary indexed group (series 1), and the portraits (series 2), following the original organization. All remaining images without index numbers were collated together into categories by subject (series 3). Finally, the films were added to the end of the collection and also organized by topic (series 4).