Beginning in 1899, Oppenheim engaged professionals employing plate cameras to produce glass plate negatives of landscape, archaeological sites, and special events. The well-known photographers O. Möller, Robert Paul, Otto Schotten, and Waldemar Titzenthaler were among those whom he employed, while the photo journalists Martin Munkacsi and Ernst Gränert were sent to the Tell Halaf Museum by editorial offices of the print media. Oppenheim himself took up photography not long after the introduction of roll film and the small-format camera.
Sharply focused photographs of the Tell Halaf sculptures illustrating them from various angles under different lighting conditions proved to be an unexpected boon after the destruction of the museum. In the absence of such images, it would have been practically impossible to identify precisely the countless fragments with surface decoration and to attribute them properly to specific statues and reliefs.