Photographic Collection

The Photographic Collection of the Bibliotheca Hertziana houses one of the world’s leading photographic collections with a current stock of approximately 920,000 positives and 125,000 born-digital images, making it one of the most extensive photographic archives dedicated to Italian art and architecture. Its primary task is to support the scholarship undertaken at the Institute by providing high-quality image material. It sets quality standards for art historical documentary photography as well as cataloging and archiving. Ambitious photo campaigns using the latest technology support and reinforce research projects of the employees or anticipate new research inquiries.
The preservation, documentation, and activation of the Photographic Collection’s own heritage is the primary focus – beyond the interest in the singular historical photographic object or in the history of the collection – and reflects current interdisciplinary research. Through a variety of activities, such as regular (co-)organization of seminars and workshops on photography history and practice, and the curation of exhibitions as well as publications, the Photographic Collection actively participates in current discussions animating photography research in the context of visual studies and the medial transformation of the art-historical use of images.
Photographic images, their metadata, and archival structures are at the center of digital art history. With the complete digitization of its collection of positives and the development of a new web application for its database over the past three years, the Photographic Collection has made a fundamental contribution to the digital initiatives of the BHMPI and its partners within the digital humanities.
The Photographic Collection has also firmly established itself as an international center for the study of drawings, first through two extensive donations of specialized photographic corpora for drawing research – the Corpus Photographicum of Drawings (Corpus Gernsheim) and the Corpus of Italian Drawings 1300–1500 (CIZ) – and second through a series of events devoted to the study of drawings.