Peter Palmquist collection of women in photography

A photographer, collector, and historian of photography, Peter Eric Palmquist was born in Oakland, California on September 23, 1936. In 1944, he moved with his family to Ferndale, California, and he spent most of his life in Humboldt County. During adolescence, Palmquist trained himself in photography. He served in the United States Army as a photographer from 1955 to 1959, mainly with the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe in Paris, France. Palmquist worked briefly as a photographer for the state government of California from 1959-1961. From 1961 until his retirement in 1989, Palmquist worked as a staff photographer for Humboldt State University, Arcata, California, where he also graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Art in 1965.

From 1971 until his death, Palmquist collected textual materials and hundreds of thousands of photographic items documenting the practice and occupation of photography from its beginning through the turn of the twenty-first century. He had particular interests in early California photographers, photographers of the American West, and women photographers.

A self-trained researcher and historian of photography, Palmquist organized more than a hundred exhibitions and wrote more than three hundred articles and a hundred monographs. He was a founding editor of The Daguerreian Annual; president of the National Stereoscopic Association.

Peter Palmquist began the Women in Photography International Archive in 1971 as a systematic study of women photographers in California, which then extended to the American West. By 1994, he broadened the collection to include women involved in photography since its beginning to contemporary times around the world. He included amateur and commercial photographers, studio assistants, retouchers, colorists, photojournalists, and filmmakers, as well as early critics of photography and characters in literary works. For the collection, he and his assistants collected biographical and photographic materials that document the work and lives of these individuals.

Palmquist died January 13, 2003, in Oakland.

The collection includes the records of Women in Photography International is an educational nonprofit group founded in 1981 by Thea Litsios, Orah Moore, Mary McNally, and other wmen photographers in Los Angeles, California. The professional organization serves women photographers, photographic educators, photography students, and gallery owners around the world. It promotes women photographers and their work through programs, exhibitions, juried competitions and publications. The organization donated the bulk of its records to the Women in Photography International Archive maintained by Peter Palmquist in 1991, and supplemented by additional material over the ensuing years.