Creager Gallery

Harry M. Creager recorded many aspects of life on the campus of what was then the National Soldiers Home for Disabled Veterans at Mountain Home in Johnson City, Tennessee. The photography featured in the album began some 30 years after George Eastman invented and marketed the Kodak #1 camera. Ironically, Harry M. Creager arrived in Johnson City one year after Eastman had founded the Tennessee Eastman Corporation in nearby Kingsport, Tennessee, to produce raw materials for the Kodak Photographics business. The availability of roll-film cameras had made snapshot photography a national craze. One photo in this gallery shows a group of men posing with a giant snowball on a winter day. Two of the men are holding cameras of their own.