Southampton's Collection of Bert Morgan Negatives on Preservica

As part of a collaborative effort with Long Island University and their "Digitizing Local History Sources" Project, the Southampton History Museum's collection of Bert Morgan negatives can now be found on Preservica.

The Bert Morgan Collection consists of over 600 digitized negatives from our collection, with Morgan's work documenting people and events of Southampton between the 1950s to the 1960s. Bert Morgan was born in 1904, coming to America with his British parents when he was seven years old. He would become a freelance photographer during the 1930s, with his career stretching over half a decade. Morgan would spent several weekends photographing Southampton’s wealthy residents during the summer season. A wide range of special events, weddings and parties at significant locations such as Shinnecock Hills Golf Course, Southampton Bathing Company and the Meadow Club of Southampton were captured via his photography. His desire to enter this wealthy social field was done by way of photographing the people of Southampton especially, in his own words photographing “the group that went every day to the races, the group that regularly went to Jamaica and Bermuda”. The circles of high society respected his professionalism, as it in turn meant that he would never show them in an unkind way utilizing his medium. He would send copies of his photos to not only his subjects, but also to publications such as “Town & Country” and “Vogue”.

Project Director Dr. Gregory S. Hunter has been in collaboration with us at the Southampton History Museum since 2020, and has been instrumental in not only a digital database for this collection, but also many others across Long Island. This is done via a five-year grant from the Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation, which allows fellowships for master's and doctoral students to assist with the project. With over 40 historical organizations and over 50,000 uploaded images utilizing 3,200 gigabytes of data already in use, Dr. Hunter and his students are still adding new historical materials to this day, and will continue to do so with each school semester.

We encourage all viewers and guests of the Southampton History Museum to visit the project's website often, as more photographs are being uploaded.