Bob Adelman (1930-2016) studied photography with Alexey Brodovitch at The New School in the 1950s and became one of the photographers regularly documenting the life of the New School in the 1970s and 1980s. Adelman also taught at the school and was one of the most well-known photographers of the Civil Rights Movement. This collection consists largely of black and white photographic prints taken for the New School for Social Research.

The collection also includes a small group of prints representing Adelman's work in documentary journalism, including photographs of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr., as well as photographs documenting life in New Orleans and Moscow, and the New York City Housing Authority.

This record group consists of photographic records created, commissioned and compiled by The New School's Communications and External Affairs office. The collection consists of images of campus facilities, faculty and administrators, dominated by images of Parsons School of Design classes, the Parsons fashion critics awards, commencement ceremonies, and guests of Inside the Actors Studio. While there are photographs from earlier decades, the prints, negatives, transparencies, and thumbnail printouts of digital image files largely represent the university in the 1990s through early 2000s.