The Aerial Reconnaissance Archives

http://www.evidenceincamera.co.uk/index.htm

Evidenceincamera has been created by The Aerial Reconnaissance Archives (TARA) at Keele University . Their aim is to make the aerial reconnaissance photographs, deposited by the UK Ministry of Defence at TARA , accessible via the internet. You can access 5.5 million photographs taken over occupied Western Europe , by the Allies during World War II.

British Pathe Limited

http://www.britishpathe.com/index.php

British Pathe are one of the oldest media companies in the world.

Their roots lie in 1890s Paris where their founder, Charles Pathe, pioneered the development of the moving image. They were established in London in 1902, and by 1910 were producing the Pathe Gazette. After the First World War they started producing various Cinemagazines. By 1930 they were producing the Gazette, the Pathetone Weekly, the Pathe Pictorial and Eve’s Film Review, covering entertainment, culture and womens’ issues.

The BritishPathe has 3500 hours of filmed history amounting to over 90,000 individual items, and over 12 million digital images.

ILN Picture Library (The Illustrated LondonNews)

http://www.ilnpictures.co.uk/default.asp

The Illustrated London News appearance on 14 May 1842 and has been published continually up to the present day. From1842 to 1989, it is strong on all areas of World political, industrial and social history from the middle of the 19th century, including royalty, archaeology, science and invention, general news stories, architecture, sport, entertainment, education, poverty, transport and travel.

The ILN has over 2.000.000 images and it could be relied upon to chronicle everyday life too. The development of domestic, industrial and political life over every strata of society was recorded faithfully. Servants, female suffrage, strikes, homes, crime leisure, emigration, religion and food are just some aspects of a rapidly changing world, which featured. Particularly well documented were the upper classes. Debutantes’ Balls and “the Season” defined much of high-class society throughout the 19th and 20th centuries with the parties, social engagements and betrothals of the privileged set.

IWM Collections

http://www.iwmcollections.org.uk/

The Imperial War Museum Photograph Archive is a huge resource of more than 8 million photographs. The on-line database currently summarises most of these images in groups. To assist researchers, many popular photographs are also catalogued individually and accompanied by thumbnail images. Database searches will display details of individual photographs followed by records of relevant groups. It is possible to purchase copies of photographs with thumbnail images by using the ‘My Order’ facility in the View or Order Image screen.

Lebrecht Music and Art Photo Library

http://193.173.87.175/lebrecht

Lebrecht Music and Arts combines an archive of music photographs, lithographs, scores and paintings with up to the minute contemporary images of people in all the arts and the background to their lives. The Collection is founded on Classical Music images from early antiquity to post minimalism, and include major figures in Jazz and Rock. In association with libraries in France and Germany Lebrecht has access to 8 million images in every area of arts and entertainment.

It covers every aspect of the life and works of composers and musicians. The opera houses and concert halls where they worked, the cities and societies where they lived and the writers, poets, artists, philosophers, politicians, investors and ordinary people with whom they associated. The collection extends from Shakespeare to Chagall and Saul Bellow to Stalin, from Edison to Einstein.

Popperfoto.com

http://www.popperfoto.com/index.asp

Established in 1934 by Paul Popper, a European photojournalist who moved to London as a literary and photographic agent, Popperfoto.com comprises 14 million images and illustrations, which cover 150 years of photographic history. Subjects include: agriculture, animals, communications, crime, demonstrations, disasters, entertainment, fashion, humour, industry, medicine, music, people, personalities, politics, religion, royalty, science, social history, sport, transport & travel.

PhotoLondon

http://www.photolondon.org.uk/index.htm

The site provides background information on photography in London. The five important public collections are:

Guildhall Library Print Room: over100,000 watercolors, prints, maps and photographs of London. It is the foremost collection of historic visual images of Londonin the world. Over 20,000 of these images on-line.

London Metropolitan Archives: almost 500.000 photographs, mainly topographical, covering the Greater London area. Most were taken for official purposes by the former Greater London council and include education, transport, public buildings, war damage and major redevelopment. It primarily concerns the twentieth century.

Museum of London. The Historic Photographs Collection contains 280,000 images from c.1845 to the present day. It covers both the topography of Greater London and its social history, and is particularly strong on documentary photography from the 1930s onwards.

National Monuments Record English Heritage : o ver 500.000 photographs of Greater London that span the history of photography.

Westmister CityArchives.   A collection of 50,000 photographs, engravings, watercolors and drawings and is a uniquely valuable visual record of buildings and people of Westminsterfrom 1650 to the present day.

Further highlights include Michael Pritchard’s ‘Directory of London photographers 1841-1908’ and the photoLondon Survey of London’s public collections of photographs.

The Royal Photographic Society

http://www.rps.org/book/contents.html

The Society’s world-famous collection is part of Britain ‘s national heritage. It includes over 150,000 photographs, and other unique material from 1827 to the present day. This collection has been built up over a hundred years and covers the whole evolution of photography and the variety of photographic processes, illustrated by the work of such early pioneers as Talbot, Fenton, Cameron and Robinson. There are modern classics by Weston, Adams, Karsh and contemporary photographers. Material by the Secessionist photographers, Coburn, Steichen and Stieglitz is strong, as is the history of early color photography.  The RPS comprises positives, negatives, images on glass, on paper, on metal, on film, in black and white, in color and thousands of other variations; over 6,000 items of photographic equipment, 13,000 books and 13,000 bound volumes of periodicals, 5,000 letters, research notes, catalogues, scrapbooks etc. directly relating to specific stages in photography’s growth and history. It covers the period from pre-photography, late eighteenth century writings, until the present day. But the strengths are nineteenth and early twentieth century British pictorial work. The divisions of the Collections are: The Photographic Collection, The Equipment Collection and The Library.

Science & Society Picture Library (London)

http://www.scienceandsociety.co.uk/index.asp

SSPL represents over a million images from the ScienceMuseum, the National Museum of Photography, Film & Television and the NationalRailwayMuseum. With over 30,000 images digitalized. The collections include 4000 personalities, the Daily Herald and Manchester Daily Express archives, and the work of Julia Margaret Cameron, William Henry Fox Talbot and Tony Ray-Jones.

The collections of objects and images at the National Museum of Photography, Film & Television document the history of photography, film and television from the earliest days. The collections include many impressive individual archives, including photographs by William Henry Fox Talbot, Julia Margaret Cameron, Lewis Carroll and Francis Frith. The archive of advertising photographer Zoltan Glass (1903 – 1982) contains thousands of unique pre-war German motor racing images.