Photo

With its extensive photographic record collections pertaining to excavation contexts, ancient architecture, sculptures, small finds, and inscriptions, the DAI provides over one of the largest and most longstanding archaeological image collections worldwide. The common historical origins and beginnings of photography in the 19^th century have contributed to the establishment of a wide spectrum of different visual media within the institute's holdings, thus reflecting the history of photography as marked by glass negative frames in its early pioneering days to today's high-resolution digital imaging.

The different photo libraries at the DAI locations by and large reflect the archaeological fields of research in the respective host regions. The image archives are available to the scientific community, but also to commercial users upon request. A large part of the holdings can be searched digitally via the iDAI.objects (Arachne object database).