Most of the individual items in the collection are recruited from the archives, in particular from estates and court records as well as smaller donations and purchases. The collection is exclusively oriented towards the object and contains material from a wide variety of image techniques and media, whereby a distinction is made between normal, oversized and large formats as well as albums and digital photographs. Originals were reproduced and stored separately until 2002. For conservation reasons, slides, negatives and glass plates are also archived in separate series and provided with their own negative numbers. The arrangement system of the working image archive and the classification of the holdings are divided into two topographical series (domestic and foreign) according to the local alphabet, subdivided according to content into individual views. Another series is the portrait collection, arranged according to the alphabet of names, which records group shots with individual references. Pictorial documents, such as event photos, which are of importance for the Landgrafschaft Hessen-Darmstadt or the Grand Duchy of Hesse and finally the Federal State of Hesse, as well as pictorial documents on the history of archives, auxiliary sciences, military, police, parties, associations/associations, economy, customs, individual population groups, etc., are summarized in the thematic series. The work image archive was closed after entering the title recordings of the images into the online database HADIS. Since the captured images are classified, digitized, and linked to the online title shot of the image, there is no need to make reproductions.