Senator Dianne Feinstein’s Career in Photos

Digital photos chronicling the late Senator Dianne Feinstein’s 30-year career in the Senate are now available for research at Stanford University Libraries. The images pulled from the U.S Senate Photographic Studio represent a portion of The Dianne Feinstein Senatorial Papers, 1992-2023 held by the Libraries’ Department of Special Collections and University Archives. For the past eight months, Sabrina Gunn, the Feinstein Papers Digital Archivist, has pored over 16,000 digital photographs to arrange, describe, and paint a vivid picture of Feinstein’s incredible career as the longest-serving woman in the Senate.

Receiving thousands of digital photos as JPEGs on a USB drive was a daunting task for Gunn. However, the born-digital photographic material provided an excellent opportunity for Gunn to familiarize herself with Feinstein’s life in the Senate, including her committee assignments, legislative priorities, frequent collaborators, and senatorial traditions. “It is my hope that the digital Senate Photographic Studio images can serve as a helpful entry point to exploring The Dianne Feinstein Senatorial Papers,” says Gunn. Below, she shares some insights gained from her archival work over the past eight months.

One of my primary takeaways from processing 30 years’ worth of Feinstein’s official Senate photos is the prevalence of committee work in her busy agenda. Feinstein notably served on six committees and 10 subcommittees during her nearly five terms in the Senate. She also broke new ground by being the first woman to chair the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, the first woman to preside over a U.S. presidential inauguration, and the first woman to serve as Ranking Member on the Senate Committee on the Judiciary. Assigning subject headings for committee hearing photos that I encountered revealed an interesting statistic: of the nearly 16,000 digital objects described, almost 6,500 were of Senate Judiciary Committee hearings. While the nature of Senate Judiciary Committee hearings can vary greatly, from oversight hearings to the consideration of nominations and pending legislation, I discovered that Feinstein participated in nomination hearings for eight of the nine current Supreme Court justices: John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Another significant insight gained from processing these digital photos is a deeper understanding of Feinstein’s primary issue areas and major legislative achievements. Gun control became a top priority for Feinstein following the assassinations of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk in 1978 and the 1993 mass shooting at 101 California Street in San Francisco. Her resolve to prevent further gun violence led her to author a federal assault weapons ban, which passed as part of the 1994 crime bill.

Despite the eventual lapse of the bill in 2004, Feinstein continued her efforts to reinstate the ban over the years. Namely, the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2013 prompted Feinstein to introduce the Assault Weapons Ban of 2013, which ultimately failed to pass in the Senate.

Additionally, Feinstein supported several bills aimed at preventing gender-based violence. She co-sponsored the Violence Against Women Act of 1993 (otherwise known as “VAWA"), a bill intended to prevent domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking that was introduced by then-Senator Joe Biden and signed into law by President Bill Clinton. After the bill’s expiration in 2019, Feinstein joined Senators Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Joni Ernst (R-IA), and Dick Durbin (D-IL) in authoring the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2022, which was reauthorized by President Joe Biden on March 15, 2022.

Finally, I greatly enjoyed getting a glimpse into some of the Senate’s traditions, the collaborative relationships Feinstein formed over three decades in Congress, and her dedication to organizing bipartisan gatherings with women of the Senate. A Senate tradition that Feinstein regularly took part in is “Seersucker Thursday,” when senators don seersucker suits on a warm day in the second or third week of June. Feinstein is credited with encouraging participation from women of the Senate, even going so far as to purchase outfits for the growing contingent of women senators in 2005 to appear at that year’s Seersucker Thursday.

Feinstein’s extensive committee work meant she developed collegial relationships with both members of her own party and those across the aisle. Identifying senators in each of the 16,000 Senate Photo Studio photos to add as subject headings not only gave me a near-photographic memory of the many congressional members Feinstein worked alongside from 1992–2023, but also quantitatively demonstrated her most frequent committee collaborators when faceting by topic, including Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Senator Arlen Specter (D-KS), and Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA). And although committee hearings are mostly business-focused, there were occasional personal celebrations, such as when Senator Chuck Grassley presented Feinstein with a Stanford-themed birthday cake (Feinstein is a 1955 Stanford alum) at the conclusion of a Judiciary Committee hearing held on her birthday.

As the first female senator to represent California and a member of the cohort of women senators elected in 1992, deemed “The Year of the Woman,” Feinstein became known for organizing bipartisan gatherings with women of the Senate. I encountered many of these events across the digital photos, but a favorite remains a dinner party she hosted at her Washington, D.C. residence for fellow women of the Senate and First Lady Michelle Obama in 2009, complete with a magician as entertainment.

Gunn’s work is part of a larger effort by the Department of Special Collections and University Archives to process The Dianne Feinstein Senatorial Papers, 1992-2023, one of the largest collections in the Libraries. As parts of the collection are ingested in the coming years, the Libraries will share them with the public. In the meantime, the Libraries have Feinstein’s early political materials available for research in the Dianne Feinstein papers : early career, 1955-1994.

The Department of Special Collections and University Archives is a part of Stanford University Libraries. We acquire, arrange, describe, preserve, and make available materials of enduring historic value to support the research needs of Stanford students and faculty as well as the larger community of scholars. Our department comprises three distinct collecting divisions: Manuscripts, Rare Books, and University Archives; a public services division; and an exhibitions and publications program. If you would like to share materials or collaborate, or if you have any questions about using the collections, please contact specialcollections@stanford.edu.