Current Collection
The 50,000 item collection documents Gedney's work from the 1950s to 1989. Subjects include photographs of cross country road trips; rural New York; Manhattan; Brooklyn; rural Kentucky; Hippies in San Francisco; composers; gay rallies and demonstrations; St. Joseph’s School for the Deaf; India; England; Ireland; France; and, a large number of nocturnal pictures.
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Archive of Documentary Arts
919-660-5822
919-660-5822
Narrow Collection By
- Subject
- Cornett Family (921)
- Benares, India (688)
- Calcutta, India (360)
- San Francisco (346)
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- Year
- 1972 (868)
- ca. 1970 (792)
- 1966 or 1967 (405)
- 1967 (401)
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Categories
Book Dummies
Photographs
Composers, 1962-1968 |Cross Country, 1966-1967 |Europe, 1974-1982 |The Farm, 1950s |India, 1969-1971 and 1979-1980 |Kansas, 1969 |Kentucky, 1964 and 1971 |Miscellaneous, 1958-1982 |New York, 1954-1984 |San Francisco, 1966-1967 |St. Joseph's School for the Deaf, ca. 1960
Writings
Throughout his life, William Gedney made notes and kept notebooks. As early as the 1950s, he began writing thoughts and observations on loose pages and in small store-bought pocket-sized notebooks. Later, this practice evolved into a formalized process of jotting, describing, transcribing, and often retranscribing from the smaller pocket notebooks into larger books, handmade by Gedney. Among other writings, this collection includes: two handmade companion books, similarly formatted and titled, "Transcriptions and Notes 1, 1971 - 1981" and "Transcriptions and Notes 2"; handmade books of technical information on photography; two handmade books devoted to Gedney's notes and research on Myrtle Avenue; a handmade book of research on Indian culture and history; a daily diary kept while in India; and many pocket-sized notebooks full of jottings, quotes, and miscellaneous information. For many years, Gedney taught a course in bookmaking at the Pratt Institute of Art, and this collection includes a series of three handmade books filled with historical information, technical notes, sample materials, and detailed illustrations on handmade books and book binding.