Ds Henry Charles Hopkins (Heidelberg, 3 April 1918 - Cape Town, 20 November 1992), a Dutch Reformed Church minister and archivist, collected the photographs and negatives, mostly portraits of individuals and families taken during the late 1800's. The collection was donated to the archives in 1994

Ray Ryan was a well-known Cape photographer and the 1078 photographs in his collection deals mostly with historical houses and buildings, churches, nature, mountain passes, monuments and statues, etc. He was also an instructor at the Ruth Prowse School of Art and his particular focus was the architecture of the Western Cape. In his book 'Beautiful Homesteads of the Western Cape' (1972) his enthusiasm for our endemic architecture may be seen.