The Kinsey Institute photograph collection contains more than 48,000 inventoried images from the United States, Europe (primarily Britain, France, Germany and Italy), and Asia that date from the mid-19th century to the present. The collection is a valuable resource for students in Indiana University's School of Fine Arts as well as for scholars from around the world.

Within the Institute's holdings are several important special collections:

• The second largest collection of original vintage gelatin silver prints and negatives by George Platt Lynes (1907-1955), the American photographer of fashion, dance, portraiture, and the nude figure;
• 250 original prints by Wilhelm von Gloeden (1856-1931), known as the first photographer of the male nude;
• Approximately 1522 turn-of-the-century French postcards and British actress cards, as well as 300 stereocards;
• Thousands of photographs and negatives representing the work of William Dellenback, the Institute's staff photographer, documenting the visual history of the Institute

The collection also contains representative works of fine art and commercial photographers, such as Irving Penn, Arnold Newman, Douglass Kirkland, Clarence J. Laughlin, Andre de Dienes, John Alexander Scott Coutts, Al Urban, Judy Dater, Rick Castro, Leanne Schmidt, Sam Wang and Joel-Peter Witkin.

The bulk of the collection contains photographs both by anonymous and named photographers and studios, as well as by amateur photographers, that serve to document artistic and popular representations of the human body and of variant sexual behaviors.

The 47,842 cataloged photographs in the documentary photograph collection are arranged categorically by model position or sexual act and then by chronology. There are an equal number of uncataloged photographs.

Categories

There are 46 categories that provide the foundation for the many variations of an act or a theme.

Chronology

pre-1900                        2009        4.2%
1901-1925                       3631        7.5%
1926-1950                      15098       31.5%
1951-present                    2313        4.8%
not dated                      24791       51.8%

Curator

There is no public online catalog for the art, artifacts, and photography collections. Users must consult the Institute's curator about holdings. Use of these collections is by appointment only. For information or access please contact Curator Catherine Johnson-Roehr.

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