The Photographic Archive comprises 600 boxes filled with approximately 140,000 photographs of works of art and architecture. Though predominately black and white, there are a few colour prints. The archive has been indexed in various ways; by Author, by Location and by Theme as well as an index for English Portraits. The Courtauld Institute Illustration Archive, sets 1-4 also make up part of this collection.
The boxes are arranged by artist name and by country for architecture, within each box the prints are sub-divided by collection. The Thematic Index can be used to search by a keyword theme to find suggested artists.