Agfa photo-historama/ Museum Ludwig, Cologne (Germany) Photography’s cultural history is the focus of the unique Agfa Photo-Historama collection in Cologne’s Ludwig Contemporary Art Museum. The collection encompasses photographs, cameras, lenses, photo reproduction equipment, as well as books, magazines and other ephemera, much of which comes from the archives of the Agfa Kamerawerk in Munich. Information for the collection comes from a shared web site for the museums of Cologne. In German and English. 

Alinari Photography Archive and Museum, Florence This collection from a family photography firm tells a fascinating story of history and continuity in photography. Founded in Florence in the early years of the medium, Fratelli Alinari, has worked continuously in the field while also dedicating itself, on a grand scale, to the conservation and exhibition of historical and contemporary photographic work. The Alinari Archive is an immense fund of 3,500,000 photographs- some 300,000 of which have been digitized and archived on the Alinari site for commercial and educational use. The Fratelli Alinari Museum of the History of Photography exhibits work from the Archives, often focusing on important Italian and non-Italian photographers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In Italian and English.  

Art Institute of Chicago A late bloomer, the AIC’s now impressive photo collection was kick-started in 1949 by Georgia O'Keeffe’s donation of a significant portion of the Alfred Stieglitz Collection. They have since added important bodies of work by Edward Weston, Paul Strand, Eugene Atget, and André Kertész. The Mary L. and Leigh B. Block Photography Study Room makes the AIC’s 18,000 item collection available to researchers. The Photographic Society, a group of photographers and photo-related professionals, works to fund and promote the museum’s photo collection.  

BBC In Pictures The BBC has expanded its mandate in the era of web communications. It has eagerly sought to include the images and viewpoints of people the world over. The pick of amateur works share pages with professional photography. In Pictures is a leading example of the democratization of media. This is a web project that upholds photography, and the knowledge it brings, as a means to change and advance the world.Stunning color photography and award-winning web design perfect the mix.  

Calisphere - Online Archive of California A treasure trove of digital information, the University of California’s Calisphere is a search engine that offers access to the digitized riches of many Californian archives. The content is easily searchable, both by historical themes and through an alphabetical index. Here you will find images of everything from the Gold Rush to farm labor camps to vintage gas stations. Content also includes maps, legal and financial records, manuscripts, letters and diaries, oral history transcripts, leaflets, historical records, architectural and engineering records, artwork, scientific logbooks, electronic records, sound recordings, and other documents that are held in libraries, museums, and other institutions throughout California. The Calisphere is open to everyone, from students, teachers and researchers to the curious. 

Center for Creative Photography, Tucson Part of the University of Arizona, the CCP manages one of the largest photo collections on the continent. Emphasizing North-American photographers, the Center opens its collections to the public, offering print viewing for the general public and consultations of the archives and collections by appointment. The collections are also the base for the CCP educational mandate, which features lectures, seminars, free public education programs, research fellowships and internships. 

Cleveland Museum of Art This museum web site provides a substantial gallery of meticulously described, digitized images, which span from 19th century French and British daguerreotypes and calotypes to contemporary works by likes of Aaron Siskin and Sally Mann. 

George Eastman House, Rochester NY The George Eastman House, home of the man who reshaped the photographic medium for 20th century, could be called the spiritual home of photography, particularly as the historic house and grounds have been converted into the museum that shelters one of the largest photo collections in the world. 400,000 prints and negatives, spanning the history of the medium and featuring some of its greatest artists make up the collection. Keeping the story of photography and film alive and vital through collections, exhibitions, film series, events and lectures – not to mention Flickr, Twitter and a regular podcast - George Eastman House is considered to be a reference in the field. 

Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center — University of Texas at Austin Unique among photo–collecting institutions, the Ransom Center takes a broad view of photography, with holdings in diverse areas of photography, including fine arts, photojournalism, documentary photography, contemporary art, and literary imagery. In addition to 5 million photographic prints and negatives, you’ll find 400 pieces of original photographic apparatus and more than 35,000 (and counting) books about photographic history, theory, and technique. The Center founded its photography department with the acquisition of the Gernsheim Collection in 1963, at the time the largest privately–owned photohistorical archive in the United States, and has recently taken custodianship the crown jewel of photojournalism archives, the Magnum Agency collection. The comprehensive nature of their collections has made the Ransom Center a major hub for photo research and scholarship. Both the photo collection and the photo library have excellent searchable online databases, making these rich and diverse holdings accessible. The Center makes photographic copies of its materials available to scholars, and offers reproductions of some photographs for personal use. 

International Center for Photography, New York In their elegant digs on New York’s Avenue of the Americas, the International Center for Photography’s museum exhibits challenging new work while reconsidering the meaning and resonance of historical work. Its substantial photography collections reflect changes in the medium since its inception and is replete with documentary and reportage photography. The museum and collection round out the Center’s comprehensive mission as a school, and a center for photographers.
 

John Kobal Foundation John Kobal was a passionate collector who ultimately became the archivist of Hollywood’s golden era of portrait photography. The Kobal Foundation manages an impressive archive of glamorous screen star portraits and movie memorabilia. The site offers galleries of classic actor shots, and stories of Hollywood’s legendary photographers, as well as the winning entries in the Foundation’s annual portrait and book contests. 

Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division The Library is treasure house of remarkable and varied photographic collections that document the history, society and culture of the United States. As the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution and its premier public archive, the Library makes it riches accessible to the public through a sophisticated online catalogue that that gives access to approximately 13 million photographs. It’s hard to grasp the scope of the Library’s holdings; the collections begin with the dawn of photography and represent countless points of view and moments in time. Some outstanding examples include: Ansel Adams’ photographs of World War II Japanese “relocation” camps, Civil War images, Edward Curtis’ 19th century portraits of Native Americans, the Farm Security Administration’s collection of ground-breaking depression-era documentary photos, Lewis Hine’s activist work for the National Child Labor Committee, photographs taken by the Wright brothers of their first experiments with flight and a fantastic collection of early baseball cards, to name only a few. Obviously designed for researchers, the site is has excellent cross-referencing between collections, and many links suggesting related areas of interest, (including links to other institutions!). Collection overviews provide not only historical background on the content of the collection, they often include information about how images were made and biographies of the makers. Everyone is welcome to research the collections and to obtain copies, either online or at the Library’s reading room (where photos can be copies or high-resolution images can be downloaded to a zip disk). The Library is such a fixture among American institutions that it is almost easy to overlook, but the importance of this photographic resource cannot be overstated.  

Magnum Photos Founded by legendary photographers Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, George Rodger, and David “Chim” Seymour in the wake of World War II, Magnum Photos is a powerhouse of a photographic co-operative. With a network of fifteen sub-agents and editorial offices in New York, London, Paris, and Tokyo, Magnum provides photographs to the press, publishers, advertising, television, galleries, and museums across the world. Magnum photographers have covered the great events, people, and places of this era, evidenced in the approximately one million photographs in their physical archive and 250,000 images online. Despite the fact that many of the most iconic images of this century and the last are part of Magnum’s ever-evolving archive, the site is friendly and informative. 

Maison Europeene de la Photographie, Paris A rapid succession of dynamic and collaborative international exhibits makes this Paris center a cultural crossroads for photography. The Maison collects only contemporary photography, citing Robert Frank’s groundbreaking work “The Americans” (1958) as the starting point of their collection. Their sharp website is in French, with a polished English translation. 

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Perhaps overshadowed by the museum’s more famous treasures, the Met’s Photograph Collection is less renowned, but surprisingly comprehensive. Some outstanding highlights are the early prints gifted to the museum by artist and photography advocate Alfred Stieglitz as well as the photo archive and personal papers of American icon Walker Evans.  

MoMA, New York Photography may not be the first thing that comes to mind when we think of MoMA, but America’s preeminent contemporary art institution not only has a permanent exhibition space devoted to its photography collection, but has long been a champion of cutting-edge fine art photographers. Their permanent collection, which includes the Edward Steichen archive, can be viewed at MoMA’s Erna and Victor Hasselblad Photography Study. There is a small gallery of selected works from the collection on the website, each described with a short art historical essay. Even more interesting is the series of online photography exhibitions that, while light on images, are rich with critical and historical content.  

National Library of Wales The National Library of Wales, the main archive of the nation, is the repository for a large variety of material relating to Welsh history, including over 800,000 photographs connected to Wales. These range from works by pioneering photographers from the earliest days of photography to portfolios by contemporary practitioners of the art. 

National Media Museum, Yorkshire (UK) Formerly the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television, the National Media Museum in Bradford is a didactic institution. A variety of well documented online exhibitions explain and illustrate its rich collections. Highlights include the world’s first photographic negative, a wide range of objects tracing the development of photographic equipment, a substantial holding of works and personal papers by British photo pioneer Fox Talbot, an archive of works donated by The Royal Photography Society, as well as contemporary British work by Eve Arnold and Martin Parr.  

Oakland Museum of California, Oakland (CA) The Oakland Museum of California’s photography collection specializes, as does the museum itself, in the Californian perspective. The jewel in their crown is the Dorothea Lange archive, which covers the career of this outstanding documentary photographer. The collection spans from her early portrait work, to the ground breaking documenting of the dust bowl migration, to the repercussions of war on Californian society. The Museum offers an online selection of Lange’s most recognized work for reproduction.  

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Collecting photographs has been a priority for SF MoMA’s since the museum’s beginnings in the 1930s, and major photography shows are a staple in the institution’s exhibition schedules. The photography department’s section of the museum web site features a representative selection of historical and contemporary images from its varied collection.  

Silicon Valley History Online This well-organized site offers scores of images—as well as manuscripts, letters, postcards, scrapbooks, menus, maps, event programs, and other ephemera—related to California’s Santa Clara Valley. The site spans the area’s entire history, from its farmland beginnings to its current incarnation as a hotbed of technological innovation. Users can browse through six major topic areas—agriculture, education, people, technology, transportation, and urban life—or use the advanced search to home in on something specific. The materials found on this site were contributed by local libraries, archives, and museums. 

Thessaloniki Museum of Photography The photography museum of Greece mounts exhibitions, collects historical and contemporary work, and publishes research and criticism on the subject of Greek photography. Their elegant site is in Greek and English. 

University of Utah - J. Willard Marriott Library This site houses digital images from the J. Willard Marriott Library’s assemblage of more than 1,300 photographic collection representing 1.6 million photographs documenting everything from Mormon settlers to outlaws, from architecture to national parks. The images represent a range of historic photo formats including tintypes, daguerreotypes, cartes-de-viste, ambrotypes, cyanotypes, albumen prints, and panoramas, as well as modern treatments. The site also incorporates The University of Utah archives photographs. The collection is easily searchable by subject or via a key word search engine. Visitors can even purchase reproductions of many images for a nominal fee.