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 Scripps Howard-owned 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,
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 F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther
King, Jr., Winston Churchill, Gamel Nasser, Nikita Kruschev, Josip
B. Tito, 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 the meeting of
December 18, 1970 with Elvis Presley is the most famous and the most
requested. After 
Nixon's resignation 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 negatives, photographs, and contact sheets dating from 1946-1974.
The images, numbering nearly 50,000, 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.
View
the Ollie Atkins Photograph Collection
