The celebratory images of the May opening of the new Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh in Lawrenceville emphasized the institution's significance and commitment to the future. Equally fascinating are pictures of the hospital taken in 1951 by a famed photojournalist that are on display at the Frick Art Museum.

The exhibition "Children's Hospital 1951: Photographs by Esther Bubley" comprises 27 images from a series taken by Ms. Bubley over three weeks while she lived in the hospital on commission by the Pittsburgh Photographic Library.

Nurses wearing starched white caps gather around a patient's bed, a doctor is awakened in the night by an urgent phone call, and emotions course over the faces of the young patients and their parents as they are treated and wait.

Ms. Bubley (1921-1998) knew from the time she was picture editor for her rural Wisconsin high school yearbook that she wanted to be a photographer, but achieving that goal required resolve at a time when women were counseled toward more feminine careers.

Two years at the Superior State Teachers College and a stint in a Duluth photofinishing studio convinced her, in 1941, that she would have to move east to achieve success. There she met two major figures in the field of photography, Edward Steichen and Roy Stryker, who, impressed by her ability, became her mentors.

The former helped her to land her first important freelance job, for Vogue magazine, and later, as director of the Department of Photography at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, Mr. Steichen included 40 of Ms. Bubley's Children's photographs in the ground-breaking 1952 exhibition "Diogenes with a Camera."

Mr. Stryker, the director of the Farm Security Administration photographic project which had been subsumed into the Office of War Information, gave her a darkroom position, and soon she advanced to junior staff photographer. When Mr. Stryker left to head a large documentary project for Standard Oil, eventually comprising 67,000 photographs, Ms. Bubley followed.

Her work appeared in popular publications, with hospital environments providing the subject matter for series published in Ladies' Home Journal, McCall's and Life magazines.

In the late 1940s, Mr. Stryker was lured to Pittsburgh by former colleagues Philip Broughton and Wallace Richards, who wanted to produce an archive of photographs that would show the city's transformation from its industrial past, and the Pittsburgh Photographic Library was born. Ms. Bubley was one of the photographers Mr. Stryker enlisted, and Children's Hospital became one of her assignments.

Dr. Jonas Salk's discovery of the polio vaccine had established the University of Pittsburgh's prominence in the health care field, and affiliated Children's Hospital built upon that under the leadership of Dr. Edmund McCluskey.

During her residency, Ms. Bubley gained a reputation for unobtrusiveness as well as for her ability to blend compassion with an objective eye. Her photographs were taken with the intent of constructing a narrative, from images of families entering the hospital to still lifes of equipment and records.

Her Children's prints, which had been stored at the hospital, were headed to the dumpster when they were rescued by Norman Rabinowitz, former hospital director of medical photography. He showed them to Pittsburgh filmmaker Kenneth Love and his wife, pediatrician Barbara McNulty, and the photographs inspired their 2008 CINE Golden Eagle Award-winning film "That's Pediatrics" (screened at 3 p.m. Wednesdays through Dec. 30 at the museum; free).

Approached by Mr. Love, the Frick Art & Historical Center invited Pittsburgh native Daniel Leers, Newhall Curatorial Fellow in the photography department at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, to guest curate the Bubley exhibition to complement the Frick's "Icons of American Photography: A Century of Photographs from Cleveland Museum of Art."

In the show's booklet ($4), Mr. Leers writes "Never before had life in a hospital been so closely, accurately, and indeed tenderly captured. Bubley had an ability to see the emotional import of a scene instantaneously and then photograph that scene without disturbing it."

The exhibition continues through Jan. 3 at 7227 Reynolds St., Point Breeze. Admission is free. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday; closed Dec. 24, 25 and Jan. 1. For information, call 412-371-0600 or visit www.TheFrickPittsburgh.org.

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