The Courtauld Institute of Art has completed a five-year project to digitise and make available a collection of more than one million photographs.
The University of London college worked with a total of 14,000 volunteers to digitise the images from The Conway Library collection. Located at The Courtauld at Somerset House in London, The Conway Library contains images dating from the inception of photography to the present day, the majority of which have never been seen before.
The project also includes 160,000 prints by British architectural photographer of the 20th Century Anthony Kersting, documenting his extensive expeditions across the Middle East.
Among the volunteers, almost 2,000 from organisations, schools and charities, worked in-person with The Courtauld to catalogue and photograph every image in the collection.
The Conway Library photographic collection was made available to explore online via The Courtauld website last week, 28 April 2023.
Supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, The Courtauld said the project is the largest and most diverse public inclusion project in its history..
Tom Bilson, Head of Digital Media at The Courtauld and Director of the digitisation project, said: “When we began the ambitious project to make The Courtauld’s Conway photographic library available online to the public in 2017, we expected no more than a handful of volunteers.
“Projects such as this have the capacity to transform cultural organisations by aligning it closely with new audiences that perhaps could never have been reached.”
The collection can be viewed here: https://photocollections.courtauld.ac.uk
