Wally McNamee Photographic Archive, circa 1950-2017

Biographical Note

Wally McNamee began his association with the news business in 1950 as a copy boy for the Washington Post and learned the technical aspects of photography while serving in the U.S. Marine Corps. When the Post rehired him in 1955, McNamee began a career as a photojournalist that would span more than forty years. McNamee moved to Newsweek magazine in 1968 and began covering news events in Washington. Later in his career, he was the photographer for Newsweek's Special Projects Unit, which won a National Magazine Award for "Charlie Company: What Vietnam Did to Us, " an investigation ten years after the conflict into the lives of people who had served in Vietnam. McNamee also covered the Olympics from 1976 to 1996 and participated in the Day in the Life book projects in Australia, the USSR, Spain, the United States, and China. During the span of his career, McNamee produced more than one hundred cover photographs for Newsweek.

McNamee, a four-time winner of the coveted White House News Photographers' Association Photographer of the Year Award, received the Association's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2000. He lived with his wife, Nikki, in Hilton Head, South Carolina, until he moved to Fairfax, Virginia, to be closer to family. He died there on November 17, 2017.

Scope and Contents

The Wally McNamee Photographic Archive consists of more than 300,000 images in a variety of formats, including color and black and white negatives, transparencies, and prints, in addition to manuscript and printed material. The bulk of the archive is comprised of mounted 35mm color slide film. While the date span of the archive ranges from the early 1950s through the 2000s, the majority of the images date from the late 1970s through the mid 1990s.

The archive includes a remarkable variety of people and events documented by McNamee during his professional career, ranging from politics to the war in Vietnam to some of the most memorable sporting events of the 20th century. Primarily assigned to the White House and Washington politics, McNamee photographed every president from Dwight Eisenhower to George W. Bush. Other highlights of this remarkable archive include Washington politicians both in Congress and on the campaign trail, celebrities such as Elizabeth Taylor and Mick Jagger, the confirmation hearings of Clarence Thomas, the American bicentennial, the Iran-Contra affair, the disaster at Three Mile Island, country singer Willie Nelson, and the lifestyles of everyday Americans.

Restrictions

Conditions Governing Access

Publication restrictions apply; Mr. McNamee retains copyright to his images. Please contact the Photographs Archivist for information.

The majority of this collection is stored remotely. Advance notice required for retrieval. Contact repository for retrieval.

Administrative Information

Preferred Citation

Wally McNamee Photographic Archive, circa 1950-2017, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin.

Accession Numbers

2002-011; 2002-027; 2002-097; 2002-180; 2003-032; 2003-085; 2004-219; 2006-078; 2006-147; 2016-006

Archivist's Note

Numerous artifacts from the original accessions have been removed for processing and storage, including plaques, certificates, a camera, and other memorabilia. Check the artifacts database and the McNamee holding record for more information on locating these items. Subject headings throughout the finding aid that do not include dates [e.g. the alphabetical files] may, in fact, contain dated material. Check individual items for dates.

Detailed Description of the Collection