Europeana: Photography

The Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya participates in the project Europeana Photography, coordinated by the Institute for Cultural Studies of Lovaina, with the aim of creating a major collection of vintage images about the first hundred years of photography.  From the first examples by Fox Talbot and Daguerre (1839) to the beginning of the Second World War (1939), these are digitised copies and accessible through Europeana, the European digital library.

By the end of the project, in January 2015, Europeana will have incorporated more than 500,000 photographs in its collection.  The museum contributes 1,000 images, from the collection of artistic photography, with authors as relevant as Robert Peters Napper, Emili Godes, Josep Masana and Pere Català Pic. It will be possible to consult the web portal Europeana from January 2015 onwards, and also the online collection of the museum, in which there are already more than half available. All the participants of the project have taken on the commitment to follow a digitisation process of the works according to certain quality standards. Moreover, each of the works has a catalogued file also with standard details, translated in the different official languages of all the institutions involved.  

The Catalan participation counts on the Culture Department of the Generalitat de Catalunya, which coordinates the four collaborating institutions: the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, the Arxiu Nacional de Catalunya and the Museu d’Arqueologia de Catalunya, and the Centre de Recerca i Difusió de la Imatge of the City Council of Girona.