We have obtained integrated spectra and multi-filter photometry for a repre- sentative sample of ~200 nearby galaxies. These galaxies span the entire Hubble sequence in morphological type, as well as a wide range of luminosities (M_B = -14 to -22) and colors (B-R=0.4 to 1.8). Here we describe the sample selection criteria and the U, B, R surface photometry for these galaxies. The spectro- photometric results will be presented in a companion paper. Our goals for the project include measuring the current star formation rates and metallicity of these galaxies, and elucidating their star formation histories, as a function of luminosity and morphology. We thereby extend the work of Kennicutt (1992) to lower luminosity systems. We anticipate that our study will be useful as a benchmark for studies of galaxies at high redshift. We discuss the observing, data reduction and calibration techniques, and show that our photometry agrees well with previous work in those cases where earlier data are available. We present an atlas of images, radial surface brightness profiles and color profiles, as well as tables of derived parameters. The atlas and tables of measurements will be made available electronically. We study the correlations of galaxy properties determined from the galaxy images. Our findings include: (1) colors determined within the effective radius correlate better with morphological type than with M_B and (2) 50 per cent of the low luminosity galaxies are bluest in their centers.

Accepted for publication in ApJS (scheduled for Vol.127, 2000 March); 56 pages, LateX, 5 figures and 3 tables included, atlas of images and radial profiles provided as GIF images in single tar-file; a full 600 dpi version is available at http://www.astro.rug.nl/~nfgs/