The collection of photographs and photographic equipment has been turned into an autonomous department in 1939, which is fairly early in the history of museum photographic collections' establishment.

The collection holdings encompass nearly 60,000 items.

Through a systematic collection of photographs and photographic equipment at the , we have managed to create impressive holdings referring to the history of photography in Croatia from the first daguerreotypes made in the first half of the 19th c. to the works by contemporary authors.

Apart from the aforementioned daguerreotypes, the collection also holds outstanding examples of other early photographing techniques, such as ferrotypes and ambrotypes, mostly by anonimous travellers, as well as works by the first Croatian amateur photographer, count Juraj Draskovic.

The appearance of first professional photographers in Croatia has been documented by the works of many authors, the most famous among them being Franjo Pommer, Julius Hühn, Ivan Standl, Tomaso Burati and Gjuro Varga.

As regards historic development of Croatian photography, exhibits have survived from the first international photograph exhibitions held in 1910 and 1913 in Zagreb, as well as documentary photographs from WWI countered by idyllic scenes from mountaineers' exhibitions held in Zagreb in 1919.

The works of the Zagreb School from the 30's, characterized by high aesthetic principles and technological perfection, thus creating a style of their own, easily recognizable in international photographic circles, round up the development of the first hundred years of Croatian photography.

The decades that followed are in the holdings of the Museum of Arts & Crafts documented by the works of top professionals, as well as by many works made by amateur photographers.

Documentary photographs of the constitute a unit apart. The Museum's photograph archives consist of 40,000 photographic documents: Photographs, negatives and slides of collections, exhibitions and Museum managers made since 1925 until the very present day. Among their authors, there are such renowned names as Gjuro Griesbach, the dean of Croatian photography; amateur photographer and Museum Director Gjuro Szabo (1919-1926), who established the Museum's photograph archives by his own works; Zvonimir Mikas - the "master of museum photography"; and representatives of the younger generation of Croatian photographers: Damir Fabijanic, Goran Vranic and the Museum's official photographer Srecko Budek.

THE COLLECTION OF PHOTOGRAPHS PERMANENTLY EXHIBITED AT THE