The Bahnsen Negative Collection represents over 50
years of photography of Antioch and Yellow Springs. Axel Bahnsen (1907-1978) and
Eleanor Kraft “Bobby” Bahnsen (1908-1989) both attended Antioch College.
They became photographers in the 1920s as students. By his early twenties Axel had
earned an international reputation as a “pictorialist,” the dominant
photographic art form of the 1930s and 1940s. After 1930 the Photographic Society of America ranked him
among the world’s top 50 photographers. Bobby, an accomplished color slide
photographer, developed and maintained the studio’s complex record organization.
While Bahnsen’s distinguished artistic career is of great interest (367 award winning Bahnsen salon prints reside in the Paul Laurence Dunbar Library Archives of Wright State University), it is the commercial work that makes the collection of particular archival value. Photographs of Antioch faculty, staff, and incoming students, as well as the portraits of the studio’s broad local clientele form an extraordinary historical record. Preservation of the massive collection is an ongoing project. Series’ are delineated by size, subject, and camera type, reflecting the Bahnsen Studio’s filing system. Contact Antiochiana for reproduction information at 937-769-1237.