The Archive

The Archive contains Quinn’s photographs of stars, celebrities and artists from the 1950s to the 1970s. We provide photos for professional users such as media outlets, museums, auction houses, publishers, collectors etc. High-resolution digital images for reproduction licensing or vintage and later prints are available, as well as original contact prints for museums or collectors. The photos are mostly black and white, but some color images are also available. 

Of all the photos of Quinn, the Edward Quinn Archive owns the original negatives; the digital files and prints were created from these original negatives.

Quinn’s work consists of about 180,000 negatives, of which 25,000 are digitized. A selection of 15,000 images is published on this website, which can also be understood as an homage to the photographer and his work. The most comprehensive subset of the Archive’s holdings are the photos of Picasso. All Picasso photos that are of artistic or art historical interest are published on this website, whereas only a limited selection of photos with other subjects is shown. 

The privately run archive holds negatives, vintage and fine art estate prints, contact sheets, work prints, press clippings, specimen copies, manuscripts, notebooks, correspondence, contracts, books, films, videos and an assortment of Quinn’s cameras. The viewing of the material at our company office in Hombrechtikon, 30 minutes from Zurich, Switzerland, is possible in principle, but only on a limited basis and by appointment.

Gret Quinn, the photographer’s wife, was a very important co-worker. She did a significant amount of the work in the darkroom (developing, enlarging) and wrote many of the captions and other texts. As a result, she was very familiar with the holdings and knew many of the people, locations and time periods recorded in the photos. After the death of Edward Quinn, she spent three years compiling such details about the pictures in a digital database. Without this data, which also forms the basis for the search function on this website, the archive would be of much less value. Probably few press photographers have negatives that are so well documented. 

Needless to say, Gret was not able to collect all of the relevant data. Many experts have assisted with the identification of the personalities, artworks and cars seen in the photos as well as the locations. We would like to take this opportunity to thank all those who have helped us to fill in the gaps. 

Exact identification was not always easy and in some cases proved impossible. If you have suggestions or ideas for more precise identification, or if you find any mistakes, we kindly request that you inform us.

If you do not find photos that match your specific needs, please get in touch so we can advise you on what we most likely have.

Edward Quinn Archive AG is an independent, autonomous joint stock company (SA, plc) according to Swiss law, under family ownership (Wolfgang, Ursula and Tim Frei), Swiss commercial register no. CH-020.3.037.846-9.

The Edward Quinn Archive supports itself entirely through the sale of rights, prints and loaning of prints.