These photographs originally were part of the photo collection of the Werkgroep (working group) Kairos, a church-based Dutch anti-apartheid organisation, collected mostly in the 1980s and early 1990s. Many of these photographs originated from the South African photographers collective Afrapix.

These photographs were transferred to the International Institute of Social History (IISH) in 2002 together with the archives of the
Werkgroep Kairos, as well as some 360 photographs of Kairos and other anti-apartheid activities in The Netherlands which now constitute IISH-collection COLL00158. Initially the bulk of the photographs were made available through a list of summarised descriptions of the contents of the various subjects in the collection; only some photographs were inividually processed into the IISH catalogue. In 2016 the collection has been re-processed with a more comprehensive descriptive list and detailed photo-data in a separate annex.