The extensive visual collections at Baker Library include photographs, lithographs, engravings, and advertising trade cards and posters.

Highlights:

The collections include more than 32,000 photographs, daguerreotypes and stereographs of factories, manufacturing techniques, business leaders, and people at work in industrial settings ranging from automobile plants to paper mills. Researchers will find photographs documenting US industry and business operations in Central and South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia, dating from 1855 to the present.

Noteworthy Baker photographic collections include The Farm Security Administration Photograph Collection with works by Ben Shahn, and Dorothea Lange; the Industrial Life Photograph Collection; and the National Alliance of Art and Industry with works by Margaret Bourke-White, Lewis Hine, Russell Aikens, John Paul Pennebaker, and William Rittase.  In the instance of the United Fruit Company, the photographic record, of over 10,000 photographs, is the major archival record available. 

The HBS Archives also contains a rich collection of approximately 7,800 photographs that document most aspects of the School’s history, curriculum, programs, and campus life, and include HBS faculty portraits by Yousuf Karsh.

Many of the photographs and prints have been digitized and are available in HOLLIS Images, Harvard Library's dedicated image catalog.

Components of This Collection

Kress Collection of Business and Economics Graphic Materials

The Kress Collection of Business and Economics Graphic Materials includes over 1,000 woodcuts, engravings, etchings, and lithographs on money, banking, and financial history from the 16th to the 19th century.