The Photo Negative Documents Department holds more than 500 000 items. The cornerstone is a collection of film and glass negatives, most of them printed. Many prints are valuable themselves as the originals were lost. A valuable part of the collection includes photos with autographs and dedicatory inscriptions. Alexey Bakhrushin paid them particular attention, and this part of the collection is being constantly enriched. The collection spans from the 1850s (virtually since the appearance of the first theatre photo) to our days. The earliest items are photos of Woe from Wit (1852), in which Mikhail Shchepkin starred as Famusov. The photographic material is diverse. There are drama, opera, ballet, operetta scenes, scenery, architecture. The photos demonstrate the Imperial Theatres, capital and provincial theatres of various genre orientations, children's theatres, theatre studios and colleges, front theatre, radio theatre. The museum collections embrace the countries of the former Soviet Union, performances and actors of foreign theatres, their tours to the USSR and the Russian Federation. The museum keeps portraits of actors, playwrights, directors, artists, impresarios, and other theatrical figures. There are photos of pre-revolution drama theatre that depict such famous persons as Maria Yermolova, Vera Komissarzhevskaya, Konstantin Stanislavsky; photos of Soviet and modern modern drama theatre (there are presented Roman Viktyuk, Alisa Koonen, Yevgeny Leonov, Andrey Mironov, Sergey Martinson, Oleg Tabakov, Innokenty Smoktunovsky, Valentina Talyzina, Alisa Freindlich, Michael Chekhov, Aleksandr Shirvindt, and many others); photos of opera theatre (Bogomir Korsov, Antonina Nezhdanova, Leonid Sobinov, Feodor Chaliapin; Irina Arkhipova, Galina Vishnevskaya, Ivan Kozlovsky, Sergei Lemeshev, Georg Ots); Russian ballet (Carlotta Brianza, Agrippina Vaganova, Yekaterina Vazem, Isadora Duncan, Vera Karalli, Tamara Karsavina, Mathilde Kschessinska, Pierina Legnani,Vaslav Nijinsky, Anna Pavlova, Marius Petipa, Olga Preobrajenska, Michel Fokine; Mikhail Baryshnikov, Natalia Bessmertnova, Ekaterina Maximova, Olga Lepeshinskaya, Natalia Makarova, Maya Plisetskaya, Marina Semyonova, Konstantin Sergeyev, Galina Ulanova, Vakhtang Chabukiani amd many other).