Image: Foto-Dokumentation, Galgenhügel - Trigonometrischer Punkt, Seide '83 (recto), 1983, Heike Stephan. Getty Research Institute (90-S419) © Heike Stephan. Used with permission.
Among the Special Collections at the Getty Research Institute (GRI), photographs hold a distinctive position, numbering well over 1,000,000 items. From a seminal collection of early modern optical devices to digital artworks and documents, the diverse collections chart the development of the media of photography and their worldwide diffusion. As archives, they complement the collection of photographs held by the J. Paul Getty Museum (which can be further explored here). The GRI’s collections are global in scope with strong historical representation of Africa, Asia Minor, China and East Asia, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, North Africa, and South and Southeast Asia.
Photographers’ archives and papers incorporate significant material in relation to Lewis Baltz, Alfredo Boulton, Marie Cosindas, Robert Mapplethorpe, Ed Ruscha, Ursula Schulz-Dornburg, and Allan Sekula among others. The archives of prominent photography dealers, editors, and curators include those of Harry Lunn, Peter MacGill, Beaumont and Nancy Newhall, Stefan Lorant, and Heinrich Schwarz.
The photography collections complement the wider research areas of the GRI bringing out the omnipresence of photography within modernist histories. The early relationship of archaeology with photography is well represented in archives such as the Augustus and Alice Dixon le Plongeon, early excavators of Mayan sites. Photography also appears extensively in the materials relating to design and the built environment, whether in the papers of prominent architects such as Philip Johnson and Pierre Koenig, or major architectural photographers such as Julius Shulman.
The environs and cultural scenes of Los Angeles are a particular focus: Leonard Nadel’s photographs of housing and urban redevelopment; Ed Ruscha’s Streets of Los Angeles series; a collection of film industry location shots; Malcolm Lubliner’s recording of the Los Angeles art scene in the late 1960s and early 1970s; Shunk-Kender photographs of artists from Europe and North America; and archives of performance artists such as Yvonne Rainer and Carolee Schneemann. Photographs of the LA art scene are also found in the archive of curator Harald Szeemann.
Finally, the GRI collections include a wide variety of photographic formats, comprising of card collections, especially cartes-de-visite, stereographs, and postcards, as well as thousands of photo books from around the world, artists’ books and early photographic manuals. Areas of strength can be further explored by following the links to the left.
Questions? Contact Reference at 310-440-7390 or email us. 
Library Hours: Monday–Friday. 9:30 a.m.–5:00 p.m.
Please visit the Getty Research Institute website for more information about our collections and using the Getty Library.