Archives & Special Collections at the University of Pittsburgh houses hundreds of thousands of photographic images as both standalone collections and as part of manuscript collections. These collections include images documenting Pittsburgh’s industrial past, local groups and organizations, and prominent residents. Many of the photographic collections in the archives are also featured online in our digital collections.
Collections have been broken down into their subject areas for easier reference. The pages can be navigated by using the drop down links that appear under Photographic Resources. Here is what can be found under the various headings:
Photographs provide an added visual insight that manuscript materials cannot provide. Photographs are primary resources providing the visual evidence researchers seek to prove their points and move their stories forward. To read about the Pittsburgh Peace March in 1968 is one experience; to see what actually happened is truly moving.
The Archives has provided photographic content to support a variety of projects both in film and in book formats. Our images can be seen in places such as Rick Sebak's Pittsburgh History Series, Steeltown Entertainment Projects' "Shot Felt 'Round the World," a documentary about Jonas Salk and the polio vaccine, the Travel Channel, the History Channel, WGBH, and the BBC among others.
Images have also appeard in publication in journals, magazines, and books including several of Arcadia Publishing's Images of America series featuring rich histories of neighborhoods such as Shadyside, Oakland, and Downtown and Allegheny City which documents the history of the North Side just published by the University of Pittsburgh Press. Exhibits at the Carnegie Museum of Art, the Heinz History Center, the Brooklyn Museum and other museums around the world have all used our photograph collections either as reference resources or have hung the images in their galleries.
These books published photographs from ASC collections: