In the show “The Duchess of Carnegie Hall: Photographs by Editta Sherman” opening Friday at the New-York Historical Society, royalty photographs royalty, and everyone looks grand. The subjects facing the camera included some of the pop culture sovereigns of the day, the 1940s and ’50s: Carl Sandburg, Tyrone Power, Leopold Stokowski. The person behind the lens was, though more discreetly crowned, no less lofty a luminary, as she probably would have been the first to say.

And hundreds of people over the years — including contemporary figures like Tilda Swinton — found their way to her, many to sit in front of the commandingly monumental 1930s camera that, she said, had been her father’s.

Editta Sherman was born Edith Rinaolo in Philadelphia in 1912. Her father, an Italian immigrant, was a portrait and wedding photographer who taught her the rudiments of the trade. In 1935 she met and married Harold Sherman, a sound engineer, with whom she had five children. The family moved around a lot to accommodate his work, and it was only after his health gave way — he was diabetic — that Ms. Sherman turned her photographic training to professional ends.

In the mid-1940s, on Martha’s Vineyard, where her husband had roots, she set herself up as a studio portraitist. The island attracted a seasonal influx of film and literary personalities. And Ms. Sherman, with her silver-screen smile and a manner that sugared chutzpah with charm, coaxed a few such vacationers — Max Eastman and W. Somerset Maugham — into sitting for her.