Skip to Main Content

Digital Labor Collections: Photograph Collections

Digital collections relating to labor from institutions all over the country.

Photograph Collections

Kheel Center Labor Photos

Photographs from Cornell University's collection. Subjects include:

Walter P. Reuther Library

Urban Affairs & Planning

  • Metro Detroit Ethnic Communities
  • Tony Spina Collection
  • Edward Stanton Photographs
  • Streetscapes & Storefronts: City Life in 1960s Detroit
  • Bruce Harkness Poletown Photographs
  • Detroit's 1967 Civil Unrest
  • Equality and Civil Rights Activism in America
  • Images from the Jerome P. Cavanagh Papers
  • Merrill-Palmer Institute
  • NAACP
  • Poor People's Campaign, 1968
  • Prohibition in Southeast Michigan
  • Social Forces, Foundations, & Change
  • SWE (Society of Women Engineers)
  • Dale Rich Collection

The Labor Movement & Organization

  • Strikes!
  • UAW (United Automobile Workers of America)
  • SEIU (Service Employees International Union)
  • AFSCME
  • ALPA (Air Line Pilots Association)
  • American Federation of Teachers
  • CLUW (Coalition of Labor Union Women)
  • Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)
  • National Association of Letter Carriers
  • United Farm Workers
  • Utah Phillips
  • 1932 Ford Hunger March

New York Public Library

Photographs Concerning Labor, Housing & Social Conditions in the U.S.

Series of Photographic Documents of Social Conditions, 19005-1939

Cal Poly Humboldt Digital Archive

Shuster Aerial Photograph Collection

Between 1946 and the mid 1960s Merle Shuster was hired by land developers, timber owners, and lumber mill owners to photograph specific sites. Approximately half the images in the collection come from these assignments and the other half are what Mr. Shuster chose to photograph as he was flying to and from the designated site. Most of the images are taken at an oblique angle, giving the viewer a richer sense of the landscape. Scenes from the burgeoning post-war lumber industry on Humboldt Bay and nearby coastal areas form the majority of the collection. Other scenes include rivers, country roads and farmsteads, small towns, and stunning landscapes. Humboldt Bay, Eureka, Arcata, Trinidad, and Crescent City are particularly well documented.

University of Washington

Cannery Worker Unionism

The Cannery Workers and Farm Laborers Union, Local 7 Photographs include over 200 photographs documenting union meetings, events, portraits of union officers and members--primarily from the 1930s-1950s.

Images of Labor & Social Justice: The Art of Richard V. Correll

Labor and the New Deal

The U.W.’s digital collection, Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) photographs, provides over 250 images of this work – both work done indoors in offices and retail businesses and work done outdoors on roads, parks, and public lands in and around Seattle. Another 100 images along the same lines are available in the U.W.’s collection entitled Civil Works Administration photographs – the CWA was a subdivision of the FERA, and provided similar opportunities to workers.

Photograph Collections

The State Historical Society of Missouri

Photograph Collection

As part of its ongoing mission to collect, preserve, and make accessible the history of Missouri and the trans-Mississippi West, the Society has assembled thousands of original prints, negatives, postcards, and glass plates of Missouri’s people, urban and rural communities, transportation, and industry. Subjects include: 1904 World's Fair, Bridges, Charles Trefts, Postcards, American Civil War, Jewish Community Archives of Greater Kansas City, Missouri Bicentennial Photograph Project, Sports & Recreation, Transportation, Travel, World War I and II, Government & Politics. 

Transportation

The State Historical Society of Missouri's manuscript collections contain materials concerning roads, railroads, waterways, airways, and other modes of travel; papers of individuals in the transportation industry; records of freighting and other types of transportation companies; professional and trade organization records; public transportation; and tourism.

Aerial Photographs

The Aerial Photograph Collection is a special collection of "maps" taken from the late 1930s to the 1960s as part of the USDA's Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service. This collection contains a select number of counties.

Montana State Library

Henry B. Syverud Scrapbooks Photograph Collection

This digital collection consists of 1,568 images of photographic prints from the Henry B. Syverud Scrapbooks Photograph Collection, Lot 045 in the Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives. This collection consists of photographs, dated from about 1909-1965, removed from four scrapbooks documenting towns and rural farm life in Sheridan County in northeastern Montana and Divide and Williams counties in northwestern North Dakota, including the towns of Dagmar, Coalridge, Plentywood, Medicine Lake, and Reserve in Montana, as well as Grenora, North Dakota. Topics include homesteading, farming, coal mining, recreation, church and other social events, Farmers Union conventions, and the Sheridan County Pioneers Club. 

University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC)

Lewis Hine Collection

More than 4000 photographs depicting child labor in the first part of the 20th century. 

Los Angeles Public Library

Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection

Los Angeles Public Library Phot Collection contains images from the 1850s to the present, documenting all aspects of life in Southern California, with an emphasis on Los Angeles. Noteable collections include: Industrial LA Photo Collection, Los Angeles Trade-Tech Collection, and Works Progress Administration Photo Collection.

University of Idaho Library

Columbia River Basin Project: Dam Construction in Pacific Northwest

Historical photographs of Columbia Basin Project and other dams constructed in the Pacific Northwest, 1933-1965.

Carleton Watkins Mine Interiors Collection

Interior photos of mines in Butte, Montana, 1890, hundreds of feet below ground.

Dworshak Dam Collection

Documenting the Development and Construction of the Doworshak Dam, 1952 - 1975.

Minnesota Historical Society Division of Library & Archives

Digital Collections

Narrowed down search of collections for all digital material relating to labor.

Highlights include: 

  • Picket signs
  • Photographs of strikes and demonstrations

Stanford University Libraries

Bob Fitch Photography Archive

Includes United Farm Workers (UFW)/Cesar Chavez gallery,1968-1974.

CaliSphere University of California

Henry J. Kaiser Pictorial Collection, 1941-1946

More than 900 photos documenting the work of the Kaiser company. 

Labor Arts

Labor Arts Photograph Collection

May Day