This summer at ISAC, Noel Cormack (University of Chicago, BA ‘27) and Kameryn King (University of Chicago, BA ‘29), interns from the College Summer Institute, worked with archivist Allie Scholten and ISAC DRC Director Foy Scalf to complete the first comprehensive organization and cataloging of the Charles Francis Nims Papers housed in the ISAC archives. This collection contains materials spanning archaeological site photography, 35mm and stereographic slides, correspondence and research notes to personal memorabilia and historic 19th century photographs.
Digitized 35mm slide of Charles Nims operating large-format camera for Epigraphic Survey. Another photographer, possibly Youssef Mohammed Abu Seif, stands behind him.
While the collection has been part of the Archives since 1989 with their donation by his wife, Myrtle Nims, it has never been fully processed and cataloged. Noel and Kameryn built upon previously completed box-level documentation to catalog the collection down to the folder level. As a part of this process, they also rehoused materials in archival enclosures, completed necessary reorganization, and provided sentence or paragraph-level metadata for each record. Their documentation work will ensure that the collection is a fully accessible resource for future researchers interested in any respect of Nims’ remarkable career and life.
Two unidentified women on top of fallen granite statue of Ramesses II in Luxor, Egypt.
The Nims collection provides a record of his career as a researcher of Demotic and ancient Egyptian legal texts, a pioneering archaeological field photographer, and as a field assistant and, ultimately, Field Director for the Epigraphic Survey. The collection’s thousands of stereo and film photographs (in addition to the cameras and equipment he used to take them) provide a tangible, visual record of 20th century Egyptology, the field of stereo photography and Nims’ specific work as a professional and hobbyist photographer. The papers also provide a view into aspects of Nims’ personal life, including his involvement in Christian organizations in Egypt and Hyde Park and the Chicago Stereo Camera Club as well as his time as a chaplain in the U.S. Army and minister in Eldorado, Illinois. Along with its insights into Charles Nims, this now fully-documented collection provides a view of the central role played by Myrtle in the Chicago House’s operation during the couple’s time in Luxor.
Chicago Summer Institute Symposium, August 2026.
Noel and Kameryn presented their work at the 2026 CSI Symposium alongside students working on other research projects across campus. In addition to detailing the intense labor that goes into making an archival collection available for researchers, Noel and Kameryn also discussed how Nims’s work might be used to explore the implications of an American photographer documenting both ancient Egyptian sites as well as modern Egyptian life. Somewhat uniquely within ISAC’s photographic collection, Nims signed many of his photographs like an artist would, blurring the lines between documentary and artistic work.
All records are now publicly available through ISAC’s integrated database, with an updated finding aid and detailed folder-level metadata. See other digitized media, such as a Member's Lecture given by Nims, on the ISAC Youtube page.
Charles F. Nims | The Camera, the Eye, and the Past
