Assembled by Mathias Komor, an art dealer in New York City from the 1930s until his death in 1984, the collection documents objects that passed through one of the first New York dealers to handle ancient and ethnographic art.

In 1974, the J. Paul Getty Museum began assembling a "photo library" by consolidating the visual resources of each existing curatorial department. By the early 1980s, the Photo Archive was actively acquiring large collections of photographs from commercial and private sources and scholars' archives that contained a photographic component. In 1983, the nearly one million photographs of the Photo Archive were incorporated into the Research Institute's Special Collections.

10.2 Linear Feet (23 boxes)

Photographs and permission to publish must be obtained from copyright holder(s). For further information, contact Library Reproductions and Permissions.

Open for use by qualified researchers. For further information, consult the Guide to the Photo Archive and Database.