Many books relating to photography will have call numbers beginning with TR. TRs can be found in the art library (Marquand), in Firestone and off-site (ReCAP and Forrestal Annex), the latter of which are requested via the library catalog and take a day or two--M-F counted only--to arrive at the designated pick-up location. This is not to say you won't also find photography books with other call numbers, anything starting with A to Z (each letter refers to a particular subject area).
Note about Marquand: Marquand is non-circulating. All books must be consulted on the C Floor of Firestone. For more information, see the art library website. Any book with a status of ASK STAFF is usually in use either in one of our reading rooms or in a faculty office. Please email marquand@princeton.edu to inquire or call us at 609-258-3783, or -8146.
Titles include:
Photography and Cinema
Photography and Australia (also, China, Ireland, Japan, USA, Egypt, Italy, etc.)
Photography and Literature
Photography and Science
Photography and Flight
Photography and Exploration
Photography and Travel etc.
Look for in the library catalog.
Full list of titles here.
(all of these are in the Reference room in Marquand; browse the TRs in Reference for additional titles)
Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography (Routledge, 2008)
Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century Photography (Taylor & Francis, 2006)
Macmillan Biographical Encyclopedia of Photographic Artists & Innovators (Browne & Partnow, MacMillan, 1982)
Pioneer Photographers of the Far West: A biographical dictionary, 1840-1865 (Palmquist & Kailbourn, Stanford UP, 2000)
Pioneer Photographers from the Mississippi to the Continental Divide: a biographical dictionary, 1839-1865 (Palmquist & Kailbourn, Stanford UP, 2005)
Online:
Concise Focal Encyclopedia of Photography (2008)
Oxford Companion to the Photograph
Database suggestions
(all available via the Databases tab on the library home page (far right); can sort databases by title or by subject; other database suggestions are available via the Articles tab in this LibGuide)
Art Index
ArtBibliographies Modern
​Bibliography of the History of Art / International Bibliography of Art
Oxford Art Online (includes the Grove Dictionary of Art - the major art encyclopedia in English)
also (non-photography specific):
America: History & Life
American Periodical Series Online
History Reference Center
Periodicals Index Online
Readers' Guide
image databases:
AP Photo Archive
ArtStor (www.artstor.org - register for username and password on-campus, and can login anywhere in the world for 180 days)
Bridgeman Education
ImageQuest
A New History of Photography by 
Secure the Shadow by 
Art Photography Now by Keyword searches in the library catalog will yield many results, some useful, some not, but don't be afraid to do a Subject (browse) search. [In the Main Catalog, don't forget to click on Long View (not the default), in order to see subject headings attached to specific records that allow one to link to additional, similar records.]
Examples of subject headings: type in PHOTOGRAPHY using a Subject (browse) search. [In the Main Catalog, one can click on the NOTE in an oval to the left, and scroll down to see a whole list of suggested subject headings related to photography.] In addition, begin with the original list, and see you will see many, many subheadings listed next to Photography (in alpha. order), e.g. Photography--19th Century..., Photography--United States. Same thing if you start with Photographic.
There is a whole list of headings beginning with the word VISUAL that may be worth exploring too, or do a Guided Search in the Main Catalog and type in visual and select SEARCH IN: SUBJECT to see if there are additional headings in which the word visual is not at the beginning of the heading.
For individual photographers, do a Subject search with Last name, First name as both Author and Subject.
Also, if you go into Guided Search [Main Catalog], you can do a Subject search, but the words don't have to appear in the order that they do in the official Subject Heading, e.g. History Photography as Subject, combined with civil war (as a phrase) as keywords, yields 40 results.
The sub-heading Pictorial Works is often used in conjunction with books that deal with a particular topic (any you can think of), in which images are central, e.g. United States--Social Life and Customs--1918-1945--Pictorial works. One can do a Subject (keyword) search using the New Catalog and type in: pictorial works. There are some 40,000 results, but there are numerous ways to narrow down the list using the options on the left-hand side. For example, click on Classification, and you can see a breakdown of the results by Library of Congress subject areas. In the Main Catalog, do a guided search with "pictorial works" and some key terms, selecting Subject.
