At the end of the 1990s, an inventory was taken of all the photographic material hidden in the collection of what was then the Netherlands Architecture Institute, today Het Nieuwe Instituut. The photographs were used by architects for publications, education and lectures, and were sometimes the bearers of new trends and ideologies. Drawing together prints and negatives from the different photographic archives allowed new insights into their historical and documentary value to emerge.

Photographer Johannes Schwartz was asked to select a series of images from the State Archive’s photography collections that relate to the sort of cultural organisation that Het Nieuwe Instituut wants to be: interdisciplinary, rooted in research, and with a strong focus on innovation and representation.