Frank Carpenter embarked on his first global journey at a time when only a minuscule percentage of Americans had ventured abroad—less than one percent, to be exact. Through his photographic dispatches from the farthest corners of the Earth, Carpenter didn’t just share pictures. He provided a gateway for millions to explore the rich fabric of human life, showing the myriad customs, traditions, and landscapes of distant lands. Across three epic journeys around the globe, Frank Carpenter amassed a treasure trove of tens of thousands of photos, capturing the essence of the cultures and landscapes he encountered, and enriching the world’s understanding of its own diversity. Born in Mansfield, Ohio in 1855, Frank Carpenter began his career as a journalist, a profession that would ignite his passion for travel. By 1888, he had secured enough assignments with newspaper syndicates and magazines to finance his first journey around the world. His primary task was simple: to send a weekly letter to these publications, detailing his observations and experiences from his travels. He continued to travel extensively, logging 25,000 miles in South America in 1898, and later doing letter-writing tours of Central America, South America, and Europe. From the mid-1890s until he died, Carpenter traveled almost continuously around the world, authoring nearly 40 books and many magazine articles about his travels. His travels and writings were so extensive historians have trouble placing his exact whereabouts at any given time, though his books speak to where he went. His writings include personal memoirs and what he called ‘geographical readers’ for use in geography classes. These would remain standard texts used in American schools for forty years. His writings helped popularize cultural anthropology and geography. With his daughter Frances Carpenter, Carpenter photographed Alaska between 1910 and 1924. A collection of over 5,000 images were donated to the Library of Congress by Frances at her death in 1972. The collection at the Library of Congress totals approximately 16,800 photographs and about 7,000 negatives. Carpenter died of sickness in 1924 while in Nanking, China, on his third round the world trip. The Boston Globe obituary observed he “always wrote fascinatingly, always in a language the common man and woman could understand, always of subjects even children are interested in. [He] had a genius for finding out things, and the things that interest everyone, and then for writing them interestingly.” (Photo credit: Frank Carpenter / Library of Congress / Wikimedia Commons). Notify me of new posts by email.

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