“The Picture Lady”

Ever since the earliest known photograph of the Mount Vernon Mansion was taken in 1850, the estate has been a popular pilgrimage site for photo enthusiasts. To better track and catalog more than 160 years’ worth of images, the George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon has developed an extensive historical photograph and film archive, housing everything from 1850s stereographs to a film collection dating from the 1930s. As the Washington Library’s manager of visual resources, Dawn Bonner is responsible for managing this ever-growing collection, as well as for making it accessible to the public.

“I assist employees across the entire estate when they need pictures for internal and external use,” said Dawn, describing how she earned the nickname, “the picture lady.”

Over time, and with the development of new technology, the process Dawn uses to share images has changed drastically. When she began as the administrative assistant in Mount Vernon’s Collections Department in 2001, she made copies of film slides for presentations on slide projectors. As digital photography and Internet usage gained widespread traction, Dawn’s work evolved seemingly overnight.

With these new advancements came new ways to share the collection, and Dawn has become responsible for building an online database of the Washington Library’s holdings that is available online in the Digital Collections in the Washington Library. Thanks to ongoing digitization efforts, new content is continually being added. For each image digitized, Dawn must carefully scan the hard copy, taking care with fragile originals, and manually input a detailed description, including the photographer, date, and subjects to make it easier to find in a search.