Carol M. Highsmith

Carol McKinney Highsmith (born Carol Louise McKinney on May 18, 1946) is an American photographer, author, and publisher who has photographed in all the states of the United States as well as the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. She photographs the entire American vista (including landscapes, architecture, urban and rural life, and people in their work environments) in all fifty U.S. states as a record of the early 21st century.

Since 1980, Highsmith has produced a vast collection of her life's work that will soon reach 100,000 images, which she has donated, copyright- and royalty-free, to the Library of Congress, which established a rare, one-person archive, to house them. Since 2010, she has traveled intensively in five to eight states a year, refreshing the library's historic collection of American images. Highsmith's work is among 21 featured digital collections, alongside those of Dorothea Lange, Mathew Brady, Detroit Publishing Company postcards, and others, in the library's online catalog of prints and photographs. Highsmith is the only living person so featured.