05/12/2026
SOUNDS LIKE A ROAD TRIP IS IN ORDER.........
New Exhibition on Cigar Photography at the Florida Museum of Photographic Arts!
J.C. Newman Cigar Co. is proud to sponsor a new exhibit on cigar photography at the Florida Museum of Photographic Arts, located in Tampa’s Ybor City historic cigar district. The exhibit, Ci**rs! Photography, Industry, and Identity, pairs rare nineteenth and early twentieth-century vintage photographs of to***co growing, cigar making, and cigar smoking from The Burns Collection & Archive in New York with modern photographs of the 25 cigar factories still standing in Tampa by Zack Wittman. The exhibit celebrates the 140th anniversary of the first cigar rolled in Ybor City in 1886 and is open through July 19.
The Burns Collection includes more than one million historic photographs from the early era of photography. In support of the exhibition, the Burns Collection published a book, Ci**rs: From Seed to Smoke, A Photographic History, featuring 250 vintage photographs documenting the early days of the cigar industry. J.C. Newman commissioned Wittman, an award-winning documentary photographer, to capture 12,000 images of Tampa’s remaining cigar factories. Last year, Newman and Wittman published Cigar City: A Legacy of Tampa’s Founding Industry.
On Thursday, May 21 at 5:30 p.m., J.C. Newman’s historian Holden Rasmussen will give a presentation at the Florida Museum of Photographic Arts on the history and evolution of the cigar industry in Tampa. We invite you to join us at this special event.
Celebrate Ybor City’s 140th Anniversary with a visual journey through its history as the cigar capital of the world. Featuring vintage factory life photos from The Burns Collection and contemporary works by Zack Wittman, in collaboration with J.C. Newman Cigar Company. Explore the deep roots of im...
