With few exceptions, museums have been slow to recognize the merits of the photographic medium. The situation was no different at Oberlin. Although the Allen Memorial Art Museum had well-established collections of American, Asian, and European art, it only began to collect photographs in earnest in the early 1970s. The recent celebration of 150 years since the invention of photography inspired the exhibit Framed and Shot,which presents the Allen's fine collection under general themes that illustrate the diversity in which artists have used the camera to frame and document subjects. It is only by acknowledging the broad range of aesthetic, technical, and intellectual strategies used by photographers that the profound influence of the medium on 19th- and 20th-century culture can be understood.

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