PHOTO ARCHIVES
Photo Archives
Unknown photographer, Third Street & Central Avenue, ca. 1928, Albuquerque Museum, gift of R.L. Crump PA1981.052.021
Around We Go: Panoramas in Albuquerque is on view from March 30, 2024 – November 17, 2024.
From multi-plate images to today’s smartphone panoramas, the panoramic format intrigues viewers with its distortion and large-scale views. Straight roads are curved, ponds widen into lakes, and buildings start to bend because the distance between the subject and the camera lens changes as the lens rotates. This makes the photographs look rounded, sometimes taking on a fish-eye quality. Around We Go: Panoramas in Albuquerque features Cirkut prints, some encompassing a full 360-degree view, from the Albuquerque Museum’s photo archives.
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.
Albuquerque Museum's Photo Archives comprises approximately 150,000 images and items 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 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.
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.
Significant donations include materials documenting Albuquerque’s founding families, railroad-era businesses and industries near New Town, and postcards documenting the Route 66 motels. The collection is augmented by major gifts of prints and negatives provided by the Albuquerque Public Library Special Collections and UNM Center for Southwestern Research.
Additional Resources
PICTURE THIS! PODCASTS: Watch the stories behind the photos
Walter McDonald
Two Men in Barelas, 1969
35mm color slide
PA1996.029.235
Cobb Studio
The Progress Dry Goods Store, ca. 1895
Glass plate negative
Albuquerque Museum, gift of Walter C. Haussamen
PA1990.013.075
Matachine dancer in ceremonial dress, 1927
Albumen silver print
Albuquerque Museum, gift of George Wormington Law
PA1971.060.017
Walter Ufer Painting in Taos, New Mexico, July 13, 1934
Gelatin silver print
Albuquerque Museum, gift of Dorothea Whitcraft
PA1972.025.047
The Sky Court, ca. 1950
Postcard
Albuquerque Museum, gift of Nancy Tucker
PA2014.007.418
Hilda Maddison, 1920
Gelatin silver print
Albuquerque Museum, gift of Roy Maddison.
PA1972.019.014