Corbis Opens Sygma Preservation and Access Facility in Garnay, France

Bill Gates, Gary Shenk, other Corbis leaders as well as film preservation expert Henry Wilhelm discuss the May 2009 opening of the Sygma Preservation and Access Facility, the culmination of the Sygma Preservation and Access Initiative started in 2004.

This video shows the opening event held at the new facility outside of Paris, France, attended by photographers, photo editors, government dignitaries, and executives from Corbis and Locarchives, the document management company that built the facility.

The culmination of more than five years of work, the Sygma Preservation and Access Facility ensures that the collection's 50 million negatives, prints, color transparencies, and contact prints are carefully preserved and easily accessible for research and rediscovery by photographers, researchers, iconographers, historians as well as photo editors and art directors.

With guidance from Henry Wilhelm, an expert in the long-term preservation of photographs who conducted a detailed examination of the Sygma collection for Corbis in 2006, Locarchives designed and built a specialized preservation facility dedicated to the Sygma collection located in Garnay, approximately 45 minutes outside Paris. The close proximity to Paris makes it easy for professionals to consult the archives in person. The 800-square-meter (8,600 square feet) facility has approximately 7,000 meters (4.3 miles) of shelving in a temperature and humidity-controlled, airtight environment with advanced fire safety and security protections.

While the originals can be accessed at the facility, Corbis has worked with photographers to identify and digitize the most significant images from the collection to make them available on the Corbis web site. Over the past few years, Corbis has digitized 80,000 additional photographs to bring the total number from the collection available online to more than 800,000.

Sygma is one of the greatest collections of documentary photography in the world. It is an invaluable historical record of important people and events in France, Europe and around the world. It is comprised of nine separate collections from the second half of the 20th century. The 1950s and 1960s imagery includes photography from Apis, Universal Photo, Interpress, Spitzer, Reporter Associés and other agencies. The collections from the 1970s and beyond includes the prestigious photojournalism, news, magazines, celebrities and portraits from the Sygma photo agency, as well as television and movie set imagery from Kipa, and sporting events from Tempsport.

For more information, visit www.corbis.com.

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News & Politics

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• Corbis
• Sygma
• Photo
• Photography
• Photographer
• History
• News
• Bill
• Gates
• Gary
• Shenk
• France
• preservation
• access
• legacy

[MindlessRegistration]

Ah, except that Sygma is now bankrupt and will be broken apart and sold off to pay for the lawsuits. Corbis.....

[Sanraita]

cool

[cacomixl]

That was 1999.

[nofuchu]

nice video...what year did Corbis acquire the Sygma archive...please..mail me..

im writing a paper on it..tanx