Starting with a 1975 discovery at a New York antique story, Larry West began collecting photographs from some of the early African American photographers, including James P. Ball, Glenalvin Goodridge, and Augustus Washington. Now, his collection of 286 objects dating from the 1840s to about 1925, which includes daguerreotypes and other early types of photographic works, has been sold to the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. Stephanie Stebich, the museum’s director, calls it “a transformative collection for us.”