The External Affairs Department was responsible for all company advertising, publicity, and public affairs for E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company, a chemical company more commonly referred to as the DuPont Company. The collection consists of departmental photograph reference files covering a wide array of the company's activities. It is a comprehensive resource for images showing manufacturing processes, DuPont Company industrial plants and office buildings, aerials and exteriors, employee group and individual executive portraits, and product shots. The bulk of the images date from the 1940s through the 1990s.

E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company is a chemical company more commonly referred to as the DuPont Company. The External Affairs Department of the DuPont Company was created on January 1, 1986 by the merger of the Marketing Communications and Public Affairs departments. The records of DuPont External Affairs are divided into two series that reflect the department's principal functions--advertising and public affairs. A large portion of the collection consists of retail sales profiles and trend reports that include background information, research proposals, cost estimates, survey questionnaires, and related correspondence.