The collection has a strong emphasis on Papua New Guinea and Myanmar, but includes other countries - Thailand, Cambodia, China and Africa. Photographs of people, family groups, villages with some place names - Goilala, Baruni, Eastern Highlands, Kimbe, Yuli. Some material includes data from the Hagahai people of Papua New Guinea.

This archive of images was put together by the late Professor A. L. Basham (1914-1986) during his tenure as professor and head of the department of Oriental (later Asian) civilizations at ANU (1965-1979). He helped set up the Faculty of Oriental (later Asian) Studies at ANU and played a pioneering role in teaching and research in this area. His book The Wonder that Was India (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1954) became a signal study in the field. Basham undertook extensive fieldwork in India and studied several classical Indian languages.

Upon his retirement, the erstwhile Department of Art History at ANU inherited his extensive collection of 35-mm slides, each slide accompanied by an index card with Basham’s typewritten (and sometimes handwritten) notes on the image. As the archive reveals, Basham had a deep interest in art and visual culture as an essential aspect of historical study, and was an accomplished photographer. These images represent an important ingredient in the historiography of ‘classical’ civilization in Asia, variously carried out by scholars working within and outside the region in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.