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The Arthur Y. Ford Albums were assembled in 1904 for display in the Kentucky Building at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis. After the Exposition, also known as the St. Louis World's Fair, the albums remained in the hands of Arthur Y. Ford who had been the chair of the Kentucky Committee for the fair. The three surviving albums were donated to the University of Louisville Photographic Archives by the Ford family in 1970.
Two of the Ford albums contained 313 photographs of Kentucky scenes from the Appalachian, Bluegrass and Western portions of the state. The third album contained photographs of the Louisiana Purchase Exhibition, including views of the Kentucky Building and exhibits. The albums contained no views from the Louisville area or from the Northern Kentucky region near Cincinnati, Ohio. It seems reasonable, therefore, to assume that there had originally been at least one other album. The official reports of the Kentucky Committee list the photographers whose work was exhibited, but not all of those named are represented in the extant albums. Unfortunately, the reports do not contain an itemized listing of the photographs displayed at the exposition.
The photographs contained in the albums are all gelatin silver prints. Almost all show rural scenes and depict a Kentucky that seems pre-industrial despite the fact that all the views date from approximately 1890 through about 1903. They show Kentuckians ranging from immaculately dressed thoroughbred owners to shoeless country people, living in a time when transportation was by horse and hemp, not tobacco, was still the prime Kentucky crop.