1. Introduction

Nearby dwarf galaxies are well recognized now as central objects under study for many areas of extragalactic astronomy, such as star formation, galaxy evolution and structure (Stetson et al. 1998; Greggio et al. 1998). Many nearby galaxies are also well resolved into individual stars, which allows one to estimate photometric galaxy distances (see, for example, Karachentsev et al. 1994; Makarova & Karachentsev 1998). Nevertheless, the main photometric parameters, such as total magnitudes and colours, remain poorly known for a number of nearby dwarf galaxies. A study of these galaxies not only in visual bands (B and VJohnson-Cousins filters), but also in the near infrared (I Cousins filter), where extinction is less, can make it possible to investigate in detail the galaxy morphology and structure (Heraudeau & Simien 1996).

A sample of nearby, mostly dwarf irregular galaxies with significant uncertainty of total magnitude $B_{\rm T}$ was selected from the Principal Galaxy Catalogue (Paturel et al. 1996). CCD observations of galaxies from this list are presented in this paper. The observations were carried out at the 1.2-m telescope of Observatoire de Haute-Provence (OHP), France with B, V and ICousins filters (see Sect. 3). Total magnitudes of observed galaxies were derived in each photometric band and azimuthally averaged surface brightness profiles were also constructed (see Sect. 5). The profiles were fitted by an exponential intensity law or by a combination of two such functions. The best-fitting parameters are given in Sect. 6.