Photographic holdings are part of the archival and manuscript collections held by the Divinity School Library and are available for researchers and exhibition. Materials, which include some albumen and black-and-white gelatin prints, primarily document the missionary movement and world Christianity, including missionary institutions such as schools and hospitals around the world, as well as the indigenous peoples with whom the missionaries worked and their surroundings. Also included are photographs of the Divinity School and its faculty, and other individuals and institutions related to American religious history.

Photographs taken by missionaries document events, places, people, and customs in areas where there were few Westerners. They reveal the physical influence of missions visible in mission compounds, churches, and school buildings, as well as the cultural impact of mission teaching, religious practices, and Western technology and fashions. The responses of indigenous peoples to missions and the emergence of indigenous churches are represented, as are views of landscapes, cities, and towns before and in the early stages of modern development.