The Fine Arts Library’s visual collections now contain more than 150,000 photographs and slides documenting Islamic art and architecture, as well as ethnographic views that provide cultural context. The photograph collections are exceptionally strong in albumen silver prints produced by commercial retailers in the latter half of the 19th century. These often beautiful images are complemented by the photographic output of the first generation of modern students of Islamic art history, such as K.A.C. Creswell and Ernst Herzfeld, taken with an explicitly documentary intent. They are further complemented by professional photographers’ work from more recent decades, which provides a striking contrast to the photos of the pre-World War I era.
These photographs are augmented by strong collections of picture postcards from the heyday of their production, the 1890s to the 1920s. The collection also includes a wide range of specialized periodicals and art monographs, museum and exhibition catalogs, sale catalogs of art dealers and auction houses, documents of preservation and planning authorities and archaeological excavations, facsimile editions of illuminated manuscripts, and early photographica of the Middle East.
Ismailimail 