GREAT PHOTOGRAPHY

This is great news for lovers of photography: the New York Times (registration may be required) is reporting on a joint project of Eastman Kodak and the International Center of Photography to build a huge online “gallery” on some of the most significant photography of the past century or so. From the Times article:

…both institutions are at work on an ambitious project to create one of the largest freely accessible databases of masterwork photography anywhere on the Web, a venture that will bring their collections to much greater public notice and provide an immense resource for photography aficionados, both scholars and amateurs.

The Web site – Photomuse.org, now active only as a test site, with a smattering of images – is expected to include almost 200,000 photographs when it is completed in the fall of 2006, and as both institutions work out agreements with estates and living photographers, the intention is to add tens of thousands more pictures.

So far, the two centres have digitized about 170,000 photos, according to the times article. The photo site is under development but there’s already an impressive display of photos there that hint at the tremendous resource this will be not just for scholars, but for all of us who love photographs.

SOURCE: A PHOTO A DAY | TAGS: PHOTOGRAPHY, ONLINE, KODAK, ICP