Image archive
The image archive contains historical photographs of all of Moore's work
The Henry Moore Photographic Archive, maintained at Perry Green, gives a complete record of the artist’s life and work with over 120,000 black and white photographs and negatives, together with over 22,000 colour transparencies and many thousands of digitised images, of which only a selected few are represented here..
Contents of the archive include:
- sculpture, drawings, tapestries and textiles
- images of Moore, his family and friends dating back to the 1890s
- Moore at work
- works in progress including foundry processes
- photographs worked on by Moore
- exhibition installations
- works in situ
- Henry Moore Foundation events
- visitors to Perry Green
- Perry Green estate since the 1940s
- contents of studios
- Source material - e.g.
works of art/trees/found objects
- animals
From the very beginning of his career, Moore used photography to document his work, often recording every stage from conception to completion. The earliest photographs in the archive are of him as a boy and of his mother and father. Some of the first photographs of him with his work include those taken at 3 Grove Studios, Hammersmith around 1927, and 11a Parkhill Road c.1930. The earliest of Moore’s own photographs date back to when he was living in Kent in the early 1930s. The Foundation has the original glass plates for many of his early works, which, with very few exceptions, are in excellent condition.
In addition to Moore’s own photographs and transparencies, the archive has material from many other photographers. In recent years the Foundation has purchased the Henry Moore Photographic archives of Errol Jackson, John Hedgecoe and Frank Farnham. It also has photographs taken by David Finn, Gemma Levine, Felix H Man, Lee Miller, Michel Muller and Stephen Spender.
Every one of Moore’s sculptures, drawings and graphics has been photographed over the years and the archive contains a record of these works in every format imaginable, making it a unique and irreplaceable resource.
Access to the archive
If you wish to access the Henry Moore Archive please complete our form (link to the right) and we will be in touch.