Masson Collection
Marion Babs Johnson (1912-1980), who published under the pseudonym of Georgina Masson, lived in Rome from the middle of the 1940s. She wrote various historical studies and biographies, but her greatest interest was the city of Rome and Italian architecture, especially villas and gardens. A specialist on this subject, she used her photographs in her publications Italian Villas and Palaces (1959) and her famous Companion Guide to Rome (1965).
During her life-time in Rome she was very close to the
AAR and upon her death in 1980, she willed to the American Academy all
her photographic negatives, slides and color transparencies. These images
(over 5000) have been digitized and may be consulted at the Academy. The
subjects of the collection are mainly Italian architecture, villas and
gardens, cityscape and landscapes, and the negatives are datable from
the late 1940's through the 1960's. A part of the collection is also of
remarkable anthropological interest, such as the images of costumes, local
processions and religious rites.
Masson's negatives and notes on botany, gardens and horticulture, closely
related to the material bequeathed to the American Academy, are conserved
in the Camillo Caetani Foundation in Rome.
For more information, see: Georgina Masson, 1912-1980: Selections from
the Photographic Archive = Selezioni dall'Archivio Fotografico (exhibition
catalog edited by Alessandra Capodiferro and Cornelia Lauf). Milano 2003.
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