Photographic Images

The collection consists of approximately five million photographic images including daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, tintypes, glass negatives, lantern slides, modern transparencies, flexible film negatives, photographic prints of all varieties, photo albums, and photo-engraving plates.  About 175,000 images have been described at the item level and are searchable online.  About 80,000 of these have a digital image that can be viewed. 

We have photographs created by BC government agencies, such as those once maintained by Government Information Services, which includes Beautiful BC Magazine (Ministry of Tourism), the Department of Travel Industry, and the Provincial Educational Media Centre, as well as photographs from the BC Forest Service and the Department of Education.   Other photographic image collections document special subject interests, such as Doukhobor history, railways, and early military and social history.

We also hold the works of important early British Columbia photographers, including Charles Gentile, Frederick Dally, F.G. Claudet, Richard and Hannah Maynard, Edward Dossetter, J. Howard A. Chapman, the Savannah studio, and Ernest William Albert Crocker (Trio Studio).