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About: - Reordered cut and paste, excerpted.

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http://www.picturehistory.com/fmt/about.html

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Kunhardt Productions: An Overview

Kunhardt Productions: An Overview
Since its founding in 1987, Kunhardt Productions has been responsible for critically acclaimed historical programming with a reputation for high editorial standards. The American President, a ten-hour PBS series profiling all forty-one Presidents of the United States, premiered April 9-13, 2000. It was accompanied by a companion volume, which was published by Riverhead Books in October 1999.

Peter Kunhardt, the founder of Kunhardt Productions, served as Producer and Director of a four-hour documentary mini-series Lincoln, which aired on ABC in 1992, and which was written and produced by Philip B. Kunhardt III and Philip B. Kunhardt, Jr. A companion book, published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. was written by all three Kunhardts and appeared on the best seller list in the fall of 1992. Another Knopf book, P.T. Barnum: America's Greatest Showman, was published in 1995 and accompanied a three-hour television special for the Discovery Channel.

Another documentary, Echoes from the White House, celebrated the 200th anniversary of the Executive Mansion. It was broadcast in the spring of 2001. Also in production for PBS is Freedom: A History of US, a history of freedom in the United States based upon Joy Hakim's award-winning book series, published by Oxford University Press. Radio City Music Hall: The Story Behind the Showplace aired on AMC in December 1999. Mary Lincoln's Insanity File aired on Discovery in 1996. It followed Violence: An American Tradition which aired on HBO in November 1995 and was nominated for two national Emmy awards and an Ace Award. A 90-minute special with the Museum of Television & Radio entitled One on One: Classic Television Interviews aired on CBS in November 1993. Marilyn: The Last Interview, premiered on HBO during the summer of 1992. Bobby Kennedy: In His Own Words aired on HBO in November 1990 and received an Ace Award nomination. It is a sequel to JFK: In His Own Words, an hour-long remembrance of the president for HBO, which won a national Emmy award for outstanding programming. The Perfect Baby, an ABC News/Barbara Walters Special on genetic engineering, aired on the network in July, 1990 and was awarded the National Association of Science Writers Award. A PBS special, The People's Palace, a documentary about the New York Public Library, aired nationally on PBS in early 1992.

Kunhardt Productions, through a joint production agreement with ABC News, has produced more than 100 hours of programming for various cable channels. Moments of Courage, a 13-part series for The Discovery Channel ran in prime time during the spring of 1992. Another series, Justice Files, originated in 1992, also for Discovery. Now in its eleventh season, Justice Files has been the highest rated regular series on Discovery since its premiere. A 13-hour series for The Learning Channel entitled Only Human premiered in 1993. Another series entitled The Human Experience premiered on the Learning Channel in 1996 and in 1997. True Heroes, a five hour series, aired on The Learning Channel in 1998.

In addition to producing shows and series, Kunhardt Productions has produced segments for ABC's 20/20, ABC News Specials, Turner Broadcasting and Disney. The company also produces programs for the videocassette market. An expanded version of Lincoln was produced for Time-Life Video and PBS Video. Life In Camelot was produced as a Time-Life premium. Life Looks Back chronicles memorable events of the past quarter of a century through LIFE photographs. Eldercare, hosted by Hugh Downs, is an hour-long home video that serves as a resource for families and the elderly facing the difficulties of growing old. It was awarded first place in the National Media Awards and a companion book was published by Thomas Nelson Publishers.

Peter Kunhardt is a ten-year veteran of ABC News. He served as Executive Producer of Our World, the critically-acclaimed historical program hosted by Linda Ellerbee and Ray Gandolf. He developed and produced a two-hour ABC special celebrating the anniversary of Life Magazine, 50 Years of Life. Hosted by Barbara Walters with a galaxy of stars, the show was taped before a capacity crowd at Radio City Music Hall. As a producer for the ABC News magazine 20/20, Kunhardt received two national Emmy awards.

Of additional interest

Old photographs hold a special mystery. Being able to study scenes and faces from the past and to know how something or somebody looked so long ago makes you feel almost as if you had been there yourself or known that person in some fleeting way, as if you could smell the air or hear the voices, feel the wind, the press of a hand.

Picture History is an on-line archive of images and film footage illuminating more than 200 years of American history. Included in its holdings is the acclaimed Meserve-Kunhardt Collection of 19th century photography as well as thousands of images that have been researched and acquired by Kunhardt Productions for use in historical documentaries over the past fifteen years. Picture History is intended for the personal use of students, educators, scholars, and the general public curious about the past. High resolution images and film footage are available for professional and personal licensing. Original photographs, limited editions, and unlimited editions of historical images, some signed by the photographer, are available for sale at the Picture History Store.




Education
A History of US, Joy Hakim's award winning history series for young people, has been produced as an educational website (www.ahistoryofus.com) in conjunction with Picture History in order to allow students and teachers access to numerous images illustrating the story of American freedom. Students and teachers using the A History of US website can search the entire Picture History archive, locating additional images that illustrate just about any aspect of American history.

Picture History also provides images that illustrate The American President website (www.americanpresident.org), based on the popular PBS series and book by the Kunhardts. Owned and operated by the Miller Center for Public Affairs at the University of Virginia, The American President website highlights national and international policymaking of the United States, past, present and future, with a special emphasis on the White House. The Miller Center is the leading institution for basic research on the American presidency and contemporary American political history. It is dedicated to sharing this knowledge directly with the public in a way that brings people closer to their government.

With the production of each new documentary series, Picture History's holdings will continue to grow, making the archive increasingly useful for public use.


Picture History Magazine

Picture History Magazine is an online magazine chronicling stories behind the pictures. Early American photography serves, in effect, as the eyes of the nation, an unexplored and unique window into something that might be called our hidden history.

This hidden history is unlike that which makes up this nation's official narrative—the great events and personalities and social forces which together propel forward our national story. It consists of little-known events and human profiles which when looked at with a regional perspective will shed a fresh, new light on the American spirit.

In additional to preserving stories before they are erased by time, Picture History Magazine is committed to the digital preservation of original images in local historical societies across the country. In this way, Picture History intends to make an important contribution to the preservation of our national heritage at a grass roots level and make additional rare and unique images available to the public for the first time online.


** The Story Behind the Meserve-Kunhardt Collection
Frederick Hill Meserve was the country's first great collector of photography. At the age of thirty-two, in his spare time, the former cowboy, engineer, surveyor, and mountaineer who was now plying a business career in New York City began searching for pictures to illustrate his father's Civil War reminiscences. One day, Meserve walked into a lower Fifth Avenue auction gallery and watched as a package of one hundred or so photographs wrapped in brown paper was placed on the block. The bidding opened at one dollar, at which point Meserve screwed up his courage and raised the ante to a dollar and ten cents. Not a hand stirred, not a mouth opened. Suddenly the gavel sounded and, sight unseen, the lot was his.

"That night," he later recalled, "I had my first experience of the sensation of intoxication—that intoxication, the only kind I have ever experienced, that comes from the possession of a rare find. I had not the knowledge necessary for full appreciation of the one hundred or more exquisite salt prints that I unwrapped, soft brown in color and unglazed, but their clarity and beauty were so evident that I was stirred. After that I attended auction after auction. My appetite had been whetted. I spent much time in old book stores and print shops, where in those days there were still floating about gems, which are now under lock and key in institutions. Then, in 1902, came the day whose events enriched the entire rest of my life."

Let Meserve's friend Carl Sandburg pick up the tale. "Meserve had talked about buying a collection of glass negatives the day before. And he went to Hoboken [New Jersey] to see what he had and how to pack and haul it home if he bought it. On the warehouse floor lay scores of glass negatives—broken. They had sort of spilled over. There were thousands more—who cared? Meserve saw on the floor one negative not broken. He picked it up and held it to the light. His eyes ranged over it. And he could hardly believe his eyes. What he saw was the camera record, an extraordinary photographic negative, a profile of the face and right shoulder of Abraham Lincoln, a composed majestic Abraham Lincoln. What he saw was the camera record of the granitic Lincoln in February 1864, facing the awful issues of that year of smoke, agony, and ballots. Up to this time Meserve had been a patient and devoted collector of the known Lincoln photographs. Now he became a tireless zealot. There are collectors who are hobbyists, fans, faddist, enthusiasts, eccentrics, cranks, bugs. Meserve is the Zealot."

Of the thousands of Mathew Brady glass negatives Meserve unearthed that day and acquired, seven were of Lincoln. "After a year or two I had fifty Lincoln photographs. I was six or seven years getting one hundred put together. The next eight photographs of Lincoln took me seven years to gather. And the next eight twenty-one years."

In 1911 Meserve published a book of 100 Lincoln photographs, which, he believed at the time, comprised all the known poses. It was the first serious attempt to put together a complete look at the photographs of the prairie president. This effort was followed by the creation of the first of nine twenty-eight-volume, handmade sets of nineteenth-century photographs showing not only Lincoln and the people around him, but more than 10,000 prominent individuals from the century. All the time, Meserve was adding to his collection. In one year alone he acquired thousands of theatrical photographs; in another, 10,000 cartes de visite, those extraordinarily beautiful little photographic calling cards so popular around the time of the Civil War. The collection spread to cover more and more subjects—P.T. Barnum and his extraordinary world of performers and oddities; scenes of old New York City; original Civil War battle scenes by Alexander Gardner and others. There were pictures of fascinating women, Europeans, native Americans, artists, clergy, and scientists. There were scenes of old Washington D.C., of rural America, of nautical gatherings, and of a hundred other different subject areas. And Meserve collected every type of format—daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, tintypes, and albumen prints, as well as glass negatives, stereoviews, and Mathew Brady Imperial prints, to name just some. Only his death at age 97 prevented our gentle forebearer from expanding his collection even further.

Fortunately, when Meserve died in 1962, his collection passed into the hands of his daughter, who was even more of an avid historian and sleuth than her father. Dorothy Kunhardt expanded the collection in new ways, adding all the original records and maps of the Civil War; official publications of the Patent Office, Congress, and every state in the Union; pamphlets and images focusing on Indians, slavery, western expeditions, education, spiritualism, prisons, and a hundred other subjects; bound volumes of nineteenth-century magazines and newspapers, piles of Harper's Weekly, stacks of Leslie's. And her acquisitions did not stop with books and pictures. She collected locks of Lincoln's hair, wallpaper from the rooms in which he lived, and clippings of material from the clothes of people close to him. She owned the horsehair material that covered the couch upon which Lincoln courted Mary Todd and the sperm oil lamps that lighted the room where they were wed; she even had Mary Lincoln's traveling commode and proudly sat on it for guests. She also acquired the Lincoln scrapbooks that the keepers of the Lincoln home in Springfield had kept for generations.

When Dorothy Kunhardt died in 1979, the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D. C., acquired from her estate the 5,420 Mathew Brady life negatives as well as the faded, one-and-only original print of Alexander Gardner's haunting "cracked negative" photograph of Lincoln, long believed to be the very last picture of Lincoln ever to be taken. (Today it is known that at least one photograph was taken later.) While collectors and institutions acquired additional Meserve materials and memorabilia, the majority of the original prints, the daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, tintypes, a vast collection of cartes de visite, as well as thousands of rare originals and early twentieth- century prints and copies were passed along from generation to generation. Today, along with hundreds of more recently acquired nineteenth century photographs, they comprise the Meserve-Kunhardt Collection, owned by two of Meserve's great grandsons.

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