George Smith Cook (February 23, 1819 – November 27, 1902) was an early American photographer known as a pioneer in the development of the field.

Cook is known for having amassed a large collection of photographs of figures of the Confederacy and the South, as well as the city of Richmond, Virginia, where he lived from 1880.

George S. and Huestis P. Cook were honored in 1952 with a major exhibition at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, entitled Southern Exposure.

In 1954, during the directorship of Virginia McKenney Claiborne,[1] The Valentine acquired much of the Cook collection, a total of 10,000 images, mostly glass-plate negatives.

He later moved to New Orleans and was studying fine art when daguerrotype photography was introduced in the United States in 1839.

George had gotten established before Cook decided to move to Richmond, and he took over his father's studio in Charleston, operating it for another decade.

[2] Cook bought the contents of the Anderson Studio in Richmond, and retained its images as part of his own collection.

Together his father and he created and collected some 10,000 images on glass-plate negatives, featuring portraits of figures and places across the South, and particularly in and around Richmond.

[4] The father and son were honored posthumously in 1952 (a year after Huestis's death) by an exhibit of their work, entitled Southern Exposure, at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

[5] The authors of Shadows in Silver (1954) (see below), had started working with Huestis Cook to prepare a book about him and his father.