Part of the permanent collection, photographic holdings are encyclopedic in scope within the context of art photography, from early salt prints to contemporary inkjet prints, with strength in 20th century works. Almost every major aesthetic development in the medium’s history is represented, with an emphasis on post-war to contemporary American photography, and every imaginable type of photographic subject (portrait, landscape, still life, street scenes, among others). The collection includes representative examples from throughout the history of art photography, including stellar rare prints by pioneers of the medium. It has deep, internationally renowned holdings of pictures by Robert Adams, Walker Evans, and Lee Friedlander. The collection includes a strong collection of Western American landscape photography.

Holdings include 5,000 black-and-white prints; 1,000 albumen prints; 700 stereo views; 260 chromogenic, 60 dye transfer, and 70 inkjet color prints; 75 photogravures; 40 daguerreotypes; 25 ambrotypes; 15 tintypes; 15 salted paper prints; and calotypes, cyanotypes, panoramas, carbon prints (woodburytypes), autochromes, 35mm and 4-x-5 transparencies, cartes de visite, cabinet cards, postcards, and albums or scrapbooks.