NOTES ON PHOTOGRAPHY

An assortment of museum shows featuring historic and documentary as well as fine-art and nature photography are currently on display or will open shortly. They include:

* "Treasures From the Attic," a collection of 100 Civil War-era photographs, on the campus of Tufts University in Medford, Mass. The exhibition at the Aidekman Arts Center opens today and continues until May 31. The works, which are in excellent condition, include some unpublished photographs by Mathew Brady, as well as portraits of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and George Armstrong Custer. The photographs were uncovered recently by the Medford Historical Society.

* "Two Lives: Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz, a Conversation in Paintings and Photographs," at the IBM Gallery of Science and Art in New York (April 27-June 26), shows the relationship between the two artists. O'Keeffe's aesthetic sense provided inspiration for Stieglitz's photography, as his views of New York gave her a different insight into painting. Stieglitz also had a more concrete impact on O'Keeffe's career, when, early in their relationship, he exhibited a group of nude photographs of her . The exhibition travels to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts in Minneapolis (July 18-Sept. 12) and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, (Oct. 3-Dec. 5).

* "Mary Ellen Mark: 25 Years," at the International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House in Rochester, N.Y. until July 5, explores in gritty black-and-white the starkness of street life. Her photography powerfully captures people on the fringes of society: the homeless, hungry, disabled, and disenfranchised. The show moves to the Chicago Cultural Center (Aug. 1-Sept 26); the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego (Dec. 9-Jan 31); and other locations through January 1995.

* "Ansel Adams: The Early Years" has been traveling for several years and will be on display June 2-Sept. 12 at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Adams, who died in 1984, is probably America's best-known landscape and nature photographer.