Ollie Atkins - Photographer          Images         Methodology        Acknowledgements

All Ollie Atkins photographs and images copyright George Mason University Libraries.           

  
Oliver F. Atkins (1917-1977) was born February 18, 1917 in Hyde Park, Massachusetts. He earned a BA in Journalism from the University of Alabama in 1938 and accepted a position with the Birmingham Post as a staff photographer. Within two years he became chief photographer for the paper. In 1940, he joined the Washington Daily News, where he remained until 1942 and the outbreak of World War II. During the war, he served as a correspondent and photographer for the American Red Cross covering the African campaign and the invasions of Sicily, Southern Italy, Southern France, and Germany.

After the war, Atkins joined the staff of the Saturday Evening Post. As the Washington correspondent for the Post, he photographed many important leaders of the United States and the world. Among them were Harry S Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Richard M. Nixon, John and Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., Winston Churchill, Gamel Nasser, Nikita Khruschev, Tito (Josip Broz), and Jawaharlal Nehru. He was the Post's Far East correspondent in 1951 and also enjoyed a personal and working relationship with the magazine's famous illustrator, Norman Rockwell.

In 1969, Atkins became the personal photographer of President Richard M. Nixon and chief White House photographer. Of his many images of Nixon, the series documenting theDecember 18, 1970 meeting with Elvis Presley became the most famous and the most requested Nixon photograph.

In 1974 Atkins became vice president of Curtis Publishing Company of Indianapolis and remained there until his death in 1977. 

Ollie Atkins' awards include the White House News Photographers' Association Grand Award, the Graflex All American Photo Contest Portrait Award, and the National Press Photographers' Association Personalities Award. Books by Ollie Atkins include Camera on Assignment (co-written with Charles Baptie, 1957) and The White House Years: Triumph and Tragedy (1977). He also contributed to William Safire's Eye on Nixon (1972).

The Ollie Atkins Photograph Collection contains photographs, negatives and contact sheets dating from 1943 to 1974. The images, numbering nearly 57,000, are representative of his work with The Saturday Evening Post and the United States government as official photographer to President Nixon.

Special Collections & Archives (SC&A) preserves and makes available to all students, faculty, and researchers many kinds of original and scholarly materials. Subject areas in SC&A include Northern Virginiana, Planned Communities, Congressional Papers, Performing Arts, Maps, the Civil War, and George Mason University. Formats in SC&A include manuscripts, rare books, playbills, musical scores, audio and videotapes, architectural drawings, photographs, and slides.

                                                                                                                                                                                                            
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Note:  SC&A has not been able to identify several persons in the images printed in this site.  We would be happy to hear from you if you could assist us in identifying them.  Thank you.