Europeana Photography Archive Launches with 2 Million Images

Europeana Photography, a new online archive aggregating photographic heritage from over fifty European institutions, has launched. The initiative, promoted by Photoconsortium, the International Consortium for Photographic Heritage, is the latest addition to the Europeana Collections digital library. It offers over 2 million images spanning the first century of photography, including stereograms, studio portraits, landscapes, and reportage. The photographs come from 34 countries. Participating institutions include the Italian Fratelli Alinari, considered the world's first photographic agency. Featured photographers include Julia Margaret Cameron, Eadweard Muybridge, Louis Daguerre, and Man Ray. Over one-fifth of the images are copyright-free and usable by the public. The site provides a detailed search function and curated galleries, such as one on botanical studies by German scientist and photographer Wilhelm Weimar, a history of the magic lantern, and an online exhibition titled "Photography in the Machine Age" documenting early 20th-century factory life.