About National Media Museum  

About the National Media Museum

Located in Bradford, West Yorkshire (United Kingdom), the National Media Museum is devoted to film, photography, TV, radio and the web. Entry to the Museum is free.

Filled with inspirational exhibitions and displays and housing world-class collections, the Museum also has three cinema screens including an IMAX 3D cinema (charges apply) and a changing programme of exhibitions. We also host festivals covering the best in international film, animation, TV, and more as well as holding sleepovers and special events for children.

Our Photography Collection

The National Photography Collection held at the Museum is one of the finest and most extensive anywhere in the world. It encompasses many significant groups of material, including the Science Museumís Photography Collection, The Royal Photographic Society Collection, the holdings of the former Kodak Museum and the picture library of the former Daily Herald newspaper.

We are proud to be home to an unrivalled collection of 19th century and early twentieth century photography, containing such jewels as the earliest surviving photographic negative.

We offer daily behind the scenes tours of the Collection, or you can look at specific material by prior appointment.

Since the public announcement of photography in January 1839, photographs have played a vital part in our understanding of the world. The ever-changing cultural and technical landscape has ensured that photography continues to fascinate and challenge us. The Photographs Collection reflects the multiple identities of photography and enables the Museum to present different accounts of the impact of the image on society

The Collection selectively traces the aesthetic and technical developments of photography, from the early experiments by Talbot and Herschel in the 1830s, to examples of contemporary practice.

It is an exceptionally diverse Collection, with particularly strengths in the early history of the medium, including photographic processes; the documentary and fine art genres; advertising and amateur practices. Movements that have shaped photography, such as Pictorialism, Modernism, Documentary and Postmodernism, are also well represented. To complement this, both printed materials and ephemera provide an important source of contextual information.

Important nineteenth century holdings include: the W H F Talbot Collection, Anna Atkins, Roger Fenton, Henry Peach Robinson, Lewis Carroll, Lady Hawarden, Julia Margaret Cameron, Peter Henry Emerson and John Thomson. We also have many examples of commercial formats such as cartes-de-visite, cabinet and stereo cards.

The collection contains many fine examples of work by leading twentieth century photographers such as: Ansel Adams, Ruth Bernhard, Margaret Bourke-White, Bill Brandt, Brassai, Robert Capa, Gisele Freund, Fay Godwin, Ida Kar, Moholy-Nagy, Man Ray, Edward Steichen, Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Weston among many others.

Contemporary documentary and fine art photography has been added since the 1980’s, including work by Darren Almond, Richard Billingham, Luc Delahaye, Susan Derges, Lucinda Devlin, Paul Graham, Sarah Jones, Chris Killip, Martin Parr, Taryn Simon and Graham Smith and, we actively continue to build the Collection.

Our Photographs on Flickr

We will be posting selections of thematically grouped photographs that we hope will give some sense of the surprising breadth and diversity of our Collection
Each group has been personally selected by our photographic curators, who have included some contextual commentary.

Please add tags as you go along, let us know what you think, and feel free to suggest further themes that we might explore.

Our Museum's Photographic Policy

Photography is welcome throughout our museum except in Galleries 1 and 2, in addition to the cinema auditoria during screenings.

If you've got any questions regarding the policy you're welcome to get in touch.


The National Media Museum's Twitter channel - Say hello!

The National Media Museum blog - behind the scenes at the museum, including exclsuive peeks into our huge photographic archive.