Smithsonian Photography Initiative

August 20, 2006 10:40 PM

The Smithsonian Photography Initiative provides access to "1,800 digital images, the work of 100 photographers, who used 50 different processes." It's the first online batch of the Smithsonian's 13 million photographs. (More info here and here). The Enter the Frame feature lets you save your own photo sequences.
posted by kirkaracha (4 comments total)

Stunning images. An interesting way to see the photographs. A treat. Thanks kirkaracha.
posted by nickyskye at 10:53 PM on August 20, 2006

Thirteen million is an incalculable number.... even 1800 seems a lot to a single user browsing a collection. I wonder how museums deal with such massive data sets. Thanks for the interesting post, kirkaracha!
posted by jonson at 11:22 PM on August 20, 2006

Sorta plug: my brother does the work for the Smithsonian Archives of American Art website. The website offers digital versions of some of the 16 million photos, sketchbook pages, letters, and other media that they have stored in the archive.
posted by Deathalicious at 5:24 AM on August 21, 2006

National Geographic has a similar size archive of original and historically significant photos. Not online though.

What are the copyright restrictions on these photos? It also appears the images can not be enlarged and that one must purchase images. I'm not sure this is a free archive. There are some really large and good free archives, like the New York Public Library.
posted by stbalbach at 7:23 AM on August 21, 2006