AMP

While I’m sure many of you are aware of this service, there are also many that are not. As Christian Patterson recently posted on his blog, we, the general public, are given free access to the digital archives of early color photographer Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky’s work. If this is news to you, hold on to your seat for this next tip, it’s a doozy:

You have FREE digital access to the entire Library of Congress collection!

That’s right, in one convenient website, you can download 20 MB TIFF files of Ansel Adam’s Japanese internment camp images, Roger Fenton’s Crimean War photographs, Dorthea Lange’s Migrant Mother, and access to 100’s of Walker Evans pictures.

Not only does this give you unfettered access to some pretty important photographer’s archives, but most of the files are large enough for you to make photographic-quality prints from them! I’ve made some 40×50″ images from the Civil War collection, and I must tell you, they’re absolutely beautiful. Also, if you’re an instructor, having high-resolution access to this kind of material is great for both history lessons as well as collage material. If anyone else knows of any great FREE online archives of photography, let me know.

I should also note that for you purists who only like darkroom-produced prints, you can order 8×10 contacts pulled from the original negatives for as little as $25. I’ve kind of always wanted that job…check out their pricing for printing here. If anyone complains about having to pay $120 for an original 20×24 fiber-based print of this, well, you obviously haven’t been to any auctions lately.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 10th, 2007 at 8:47 am and is filed under Photography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.