The collection consists of a large number of studio portrait photographs from the late 19th and early 20th centuries in carte-de-visite or cabinet card formats. There is a large collection of landscape and industrial imagery dating from the Victorian era to the 1960s. The collection also comprises many vernacular photographic albums, good examples of glass and metal photographic processes including cased daguerreotypes, ambrotypes and tintypes. The fonds is comprised of the following 8 series: Portraits (sub-series for Groups and Celebrities), Vernacular Photography (amateur snapshots), Landscapes and Industry (sub-series for Slides), Albums, the A.T. Orr collection and a Miscellaneous group of images which were generally created in mixed media.

Item is an 11 page patent description of a "photographing machine" (the Phototeria) that would create novelty, souvenir photographs on sensitized disks.

Item is a document outlining the patent claims being made by David A. McCowan for the photographing machine (Phototeria) as part of the patent process undertaken in 1929.

Item includes a 6 page document with technical drawings that included the 1929 patent application that David A. McCowan made for the "Photographing Machine" (Phototeria).

Item is an article about the Phototeria, written by Frederick Griffin and published in the Toronto Star Weekly on April 14th, 1928.

Item is an article published in the Science and Invention magazine, in 1927. The article details the Photomaton, a photo booth similar to the Phototeria, invented by Anatol N. Josepho, and located at 1659 Broadway, in New York City.