Frozen Frames: The J. Allen Hawkins Collection

Frozen Frames: Preserving Pasadena’s Visual Legacy, which is available Winter 2021 - Spring 2023, is an exhibit series that unfolds in four parts over a year-long period, bringing artistically and historically compelling images out of the deep freeze and into public view. The photographs come from among the more than 200,000 at-risk negatives that are now cryogenically preserved as part of the Museum’s Great History Freeze project of 2015.

The J. Allen Hawkins Collection: Featuring images by the most important and prolific mid-century photographer in Pasadena, J. Allen Hawkins. This is PMH’s most extensive collection, consisting of an estimated 300,000 prints and negatives. A smaller portion of the total photographs from Hawkins’ studio (about 3,500 images) is maintained by The Huntington.

To view the images in an exhibition, click on ENTER EXHIBITION or on the X. You can view a photograph's caption by clicking on the photograph and then clicking on the photograph's info icon in the top right corner.