Amassing a Treasury of Photography – New York Times The New York Times is out today with an interesting article entitled, Amassing a Treasury of Photography. The article details the current project Photomuse.org (now only active as a test site) as a collaboration between the George Eastman House in Rochester and the International Center of Photography in Midtown New York City to collaboratively build an very large online digital library of fine art photography.
“Many iconic images, the kind long found on posters and greeting cards – Stieglitz’s shot of a spindly tree framed by New York office towers on a rainy spring day; Weegee’s teeming Coney Island hordes; Lewis Hine’s “Icarus Atop Empire State Building” – will be joined by thousands of other works by eminent artists that the general public has rarely had an opportunity to see. There will also be collections of lesser-known photographers like Roman Vishniac, James VanDerZee and Ralph Eugene Meatyard.”
The article recognizes copyright issues with current photographers as well some artists being worried about the lost revenue if their photos are posted on the internet publically.
I think this is a terribly exciting and ambitious project and wish them luck in their endeavors. At current Eastman has digitized almost 140,000 of it’s photos and the International Center has digitzed about 30,000 images.
I hope that as they pursue this venture that they use high res versions of these photographs. Nothing ruins a great photography site more than having low res images only. In order to view the true beauty and depth having high res versions should be mandatory.
Also folks from Microsoft and TiVo should definitely be talking to these guys about developing a plug in to view the photographs through Media Center or TiVo. This is a prime example of premium content that ought to be scraped and offered up for view in one’s living room on a beautiful 43″ plasma — again, high res being mandatory.
Thanks, Wes!