Over 50,500 images, digitised from original negatives and positives.
Context
Creator(s): RTÉ Stills Department photographers
Administrative History ↴
RTÉ employed professional photographers to document the corporation, it's productions and events from 1963 until the department was disbanded in 2001.
The following photographers were employed by the RTÉ Stills Department: Thomas Connolly, Peter Dorney, Philip Dowling, Desmond Gaffney, Peter Harding, Dakki Heuvelink, Eve Holmes, Thomas Holton, Marie Kearns, Leslie Keating, Mary Lee, Ronan Lee, Edward McEvoy, Denis O’Farrell, Michael O’Reilly, John Rowe, Joseph St Leger
Archival History ↴
RTÉ employed professional photographers to document the corporation, it's productions and events from 1963 until the department was disbanded in 2001.
Immediate Source Acquisition ↴
Official Transfer
Content & Structure
Scope & Content: RTÉ Stills Department photographers ↴
The RTÉ Stills Department Collection contains images from the early years of RTÉ Television up to the end of 2001. The Collection features stills from RTÉ Television and Radio programmes and of Irish personalities and news events. The subjects covered include almost all of the Eurovision Song Contests held in Ireland (including the first ever performance of Riverdance), Irish presidential inaugurations, RTÉ Television drama productions (‘The Plough and the Stars’, ‘Strumpet City’, ‘Glenroe’) and RTÉ Television’s studio coverage of general elections and other political events.
Appraisal Destruction ↴
Permanent Retention
Accruals ↴
No further major accruals are expected
Arrangement ↴
The collection is held in a linear arrangement in reference number order.
Conditions of Access & Use
Access Conditions
All fully catalogued images in the RTÉ Stills Department Collection are available to view online with the RTÉ watermark. Cataloguing is ongoing and newly catalogued images are uploaded to the website on a weekly basis. Unwatermarked images, whether high or low resolution, are only issued via Stills Library staff.
Conditions Governing Reproduction
Images can be reproduced with permission only and according to rate card published on RTÉ Stills Library Online. An online ordering system exists.
Creation Dates
1963-2001
Extent Medium
Over 50,500 images, digitised from original negatives and positives.
Characteristics Tech Req
Negatives and positives digitised pre-2005 are high resolution jpegs, 18MB in size with a pixel dimension of 2048 x 3072. Those digitised from 2005 onwards are uncompressed TIFF files. They are 28MB in size with a pixel dimension of 2048 x 3072.
Finding Aids
An item level catalogue is available to search online at: https://stillslibrary.rte.ie/indexplus/collections.html
Archive Web Link →
Allied Materials
Publication Note
‘Off Camera: images from the early years of RTÉ television’, introduced by Gay Byrne (Poolbeg Press, 2004)
Descriptive Control Area
Archivist Note
RTE Stills Librarian
Rules/Conventions
ISAD(G): General International Standard Archival Description. 2nd ed. Ottowa: International Council on Archives, 2000. National Council on Archives: Rules for the Construction of Personal, Place and Corporate Names. Chippenham: National Council on Archives, 1997.
