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The Visual Materials series is the highlight of the Livingstone collection. The Photographs subseries documents Livingstone himself from his days as a young man to the final year of his life. Numerous portrait shots of Livingstone, his wife Susan, and their parents and children tell the story of an affluent Detroit family from the Gilded Age to the Jazz Age. Photographs of their homes and vacations (to Venice and Miami) round out the pictorial history.

Researchers searching for information on Great Lakes shipping will be interested in photographs that recount the construction and launch of the freighter William Livingstone and capture other moments of note on the Detroit River and Great Lakes.

Also of note is an aerial photograph of downtown Detroit taken around 1920. There are also photos of the opening of the Livingstone Channel on the Detroit River in 1912, a photo of the Dime Saving Bank in Detroit (1925), and photos of Livingstone with Henry Ford and William Howard Taft.