Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present a conceptual model for coding and dissemination of data associated with historical photographic archives. The model is based on Linked Open Data technology and seeks to exhaustively represent the most relevant characteristics for the tasks of contextualization of the documentary groupings and units, management, document retrieval, dissemination and sharing of data about the historical photographs. Design/methodology/approach An OWL ontology, called Ontophoto, was constructed following an adaptation of the methodology proposed by Uschold and Gruninger and Gruninger and Fox. The ontology was implemented using Protégé 5.5 software. Next a Graph DB® graph database application (Ontotext) was created to generate a query system based on the SPARQL language. To validate the consistency and effectiveness of the model and ontology, a competency questions methodology has been applied using a sample from the Skogler photographic archive. Findings The model facilitates the generation of systems for dissemination and retrieval of iconographic data for historical research, overcoming some of the limitations with respect to the design of methods of content and contextual information representation for heritage photographic archives. Research limitations/implications This study is based on a sample. Future work should consider the implementation of the model on the totality of a photographic collection. Originality/value This paper presents a comprehensive ontological model that allows the creation of distributed systems of knowledge representation, which can be queried through SPARQL language.