PHOTO ARCHIVES

Photo Archives

The Photo Archives Department will be closed from Thursday, December 12, 2024 through Wednesday, January 1, 2025.

Approximately 150,000 images are housed in the Museum’s Photo Archives, made by amateur, commercial, and studio photographers throughout the central Rio Grande valley and the City of Albuquerque from 1867 to the present. The collection includes photographic prints, stereoscopic views, glass plate negatives, family albums, slides, oral history recordings, ephemera, postcards, film, and digitized media.

The Photo Archives collection includes portraiture by major photographic studios in Albuquerque like the Cobb Studio and the Brooks Studio, original photographs by Ward Hicks Advertising Agency printed in the Albuquerque Progress magazine, and thousands of slides capturing the changing landscape of Albuquerque in the late 1960s and 1970s.

The Photo Archives also has a small reference library with books on the history of photography, Albuquerque City Directories, and local history books.

Photo Archives are open to the public Tuesday-Friday from 9 a.m. – 5 p.m.

For research appointments, please schedule with the Digital Archivist by calling 505-764-6520.

These exhibitions draw from the approximately 150,000 images in the Museum’s Photo Archives, made by amateur, commercial, and studio photographers throughout the central Rio Grande valley and the City of Albuquerque from 1867 to the present. The collection includes photographic prints, stereoscopic views, glass plate negatives, family albums, slides, oral history recordings, ephemera, postcards, film, and digitized media.

If you have photographs of Albuquerque and wish to donate them to Albuquerque Museum's Photo Archives, please call 505-764-6520 and make an appointment.

Additional Resources

PICTURE THIS! PODCASTS: Watch the stories behind the photos