The slide archive contains a total of about 480,000 lantern slides and 35 mm-slides slides from the period 1900 to 1995, including valuable holdings from the institute of Archaeology, a large Hamburg collection and a collection on political iconography and book illumination. In addition, testimonies of past Hamburg architecture or the collection of antique church furnishings can be viewed and researched.

The photographic archive of the Art History Seminar has a collection of over 60,000 photographs and prints taken between 1880 and 1970. The collection focuses on Italian Renaissance painting, French architecture up to the 18th century and the work of Albrecht Dürer. In addition to canonized artists and material on well-known epochs, are impressive reproductions of ivory works, tombs or ancient Egyptian art as well as large-format prints in elaborate techniques.