Since 1839, photography has quickly taken on a role in communication and a documentary function for places, stories and events, both private and public. The importance of preserving photographic archives that recount the history of our territory is immeasurable: it means safeguarding collective identity, values and culture. At the same time, the photographs entrusted with such an important task are fragile objects, especially when they are old and therefore analogue. Subject to the chemical deterioration of supports and emulsions, both positive and negative photographs need to be kept in regulated and controlled temperature and humidity conditions. Like other cultural heritage assets, in order to be readable and accessible they must be studied and catalogued. Numerous institutions throughout the regional and national territory undertake the complex operations of preservation, reordering, cataloguing, possible digitisation and online publication of photographic archives.
Of particular importance is the activity of the photographic archive of the Regional Higher Ethnographic Institute of Sardinia (ISRE), whose original core came from the Regional Department of Tourism: these are the collections of photographers Pieri Pirari and Claudio Costa, together with colour slides and black-and-white photographic prints by unidentified authors reproducing some objects preserved in the rooms of the Costume Museum. Since then, the collections of photographic and iconographic material have frequently grown both through acquisitions, including donations and purchases, and through the regular production of unpublished audiovisual materials carried out by the Institute itself. Today the acquired photographic materials form a historical section of the archive, comprising over 30,000 phototypes, including negatives and positives differentiated by support and format, from modern films to glass plates from the late nineteenth century, as well as slides and prints on paper and card. They are divided into acquisition collections, usually named after the main producer, such as Giulio Pili, Andreas Fridolin W. Bentzon, Wolfgang Sutchistky and Jean Dieuzaide, to name only a few examples. The collections are studied internally and through research grants, and are promoted through publications, exhibitions and other communication projects aimed at narrating the Institute’s heritage.
Also based in Nuoro, the Ilisso Archive represents the heart of the cultural project of the publishing house Ilisso Edizioni, founded in 1985. The Archive includes a remarkable collection of photographs that recount Sardinia and its human, artistic and landscape heritage through thousands of images divided into various collections, some acquired and others resulting from commissions developed within editorial projects. It includes collections by Italian and foreign authors such as, to name a few, Max Leopold Wagner, Sebastiano Satta, Antonio Ballero, Raffaele Ciceri, Marianne Sin-Pfältzer, Mario De Biasi, Carlo Bavagnoli and other leading figures of twentieth-century artistic and cultural life.
Over the years, archives connected to the activities of municipalities and heritage authorities have also become consolidated, including the Historic Photographic Archive of the Archaeology, Fine Arts and Landscape Superintendency for the metropolitan city of Cagliari and the provinces of Oristano and South Sardinia. Based at Villa Binaghi in Cagliari, it consists of 7,000 glass-plate negatives documenting the whole Sardinian territory, arranged in series devoted to archaeology, architecture, art, landscape and, finally, people; they were enhanced through the Fragili immagini project.
Also in Cagliari is the Photographic Archive of the Società Umanitaria, created with the aim of enriching the historical memory already preserved by the Film Archive through the digitisation and conservation of photographic materials. The photographic heritage of the Società Umanitaria includes phototypes with different supports and formats, a visual documentation spanning almost two centuries of Sardinian history and bringing together institutional and professional photographs as well as amateur shots, such as family photographs. Among the most significant collections are private collections dating back to the mid-nineteenth century, images documenting Cagliari in the early twentieth century and materials relating to wartime periods.
The Autonomous Region of Sardinia collection, on the other hand, preserves institutional materials covering a time span from the 1930s to the early 2000s and includes family albums, postcards, stereoscopic photographs, magic lantern slides and a large collection of period cameras.
The two archives of the former Superintendency for Archaeological Heritage for the provinces of Sassari and Nuoro, and of the former SBEAP — Superintendency for Fine Arts and Landscape for the provinces of Sassari and Nuoro — are instead located in Sassari. The first is based in Piazza S. Agostino and holds photographs produced between 1954 and 2018: over 120,000 phototypes in different formats and supports, including positives and negatives, black-and-white and colour. The second is based in Via Monte Grappa and preserves photographs taken as part of the work of the superintendency between 1937 and 2016, divided into two macro-series: the first includes the original negatives, while the second consists of the corresponding prints applied to secondary card supports with headings showing the register number, arranged topographically. The total extent is 1,136 glass-plate negatives, 120,000 negatives and slides on film, in various formats and in both black-and-white and colour, and, finally, about 50,000 digital files.
Finally, the Biblioteca di Sardegna in Cargeghe, a private institution belonging to the Regional Library System, also promotes a “Photographic Library of Sardinia”. Founded in 2005, it launched the project to establish a photographic archive in 2008; today this takes the form of a collection of over 200,000 images covering the chronological span from the second half of the nineteenth century to the 1970s, documenting places, events and people across 263 municipalities on the island. The images were donated by more than 15,000 Sardinian families to create a collection of significant ethnographic value.

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