Charles Milton Bell (April 3, 1848 – May 12, 1893) was an American photographer who was noted for his portraits of Native Americans and other figures of the United States in the late 1800s. He was called "one of Washington's leading portrait photographers during the last quarter of the nineteenth century" by the Library of Congress.[1]
Bell was the youngest member of a photographer family who had a studio in Washington, D.C. in the 1860s and 1870s. He took over the family studio Bell & Brothers and started his own studio, C. M. Bell, in 1873.[2] Bell worked with Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden, who sent visiting Native Americans to Bell's studio to have their portraits made. Bell also made photographs of Native Americans for the Department of the Interior and the Bureau of American Ethnology, where he assisted in-house photographers.[3]
After Bell's death in 1893, his wife continued to operate the studio with her sons. It was sold in the early 1900s to Atha and Cunningham who retained the original name. The negatives were sold to I. M. Boyce, who sold the Native American images to the Bureau of American Ethnology and most of the remainder to Alexander Graham Bell.[6] From there they would end up owned by the American Genetic Association who donated them to the Library of Congress. The C. M. Bell Studio Collection held at the Library of Congress 30,000 glass negatives from 1873 to 1916 created by the studio and its successors.[1]
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