photo exhibition
DAYS AND HISTORY
The best images from the Bettmann Archive
Verona, Scavi Scaligeri / 30^th October 2004 - 9^th January 2005

In the 1930s, Otto Bettmann, librarian and curator of the Department of “Rare Books” at the Berlin State Library, began collecting and keeping photographs.  From the outset, his intention was not just that of compiling images for his personal pleasure, but to create one of the earliest systems for sharing these images with others.  This authentic bibliophile’s passion, born almost by chance, was gradually transformed into an enormous cultural effort, leading to the creation of what is today considered to be one of the world’s most important collections of historical images: the Bettmann Archive. When the Nazi rise to power forced him to flee Germany, Bettmann emigrated to the United States in 1935, arriving in the New World with his personal belongings and two trunks of photographic prints, books and films.  Well aware of the power of images and of their inestimable importance as historical documents, Bettmann dedicated his entire life to adding to his collection.  The result is one of the most precious “image banks” of our time, which was purchased by Corbis in 1995: eleven million negatives, prints and slides preserved in an immense structure with a controlled climate, created from an old abandoned mine in Pennsylvania.

With an archive of over 70.000.000 images, Corbis is the world’s main supplier of visual solutions and every day, many of the images that millions of people see in advertisements, books, daily papers and magazines, or even at the cinema or on TV, are images from Corbis.  Founded by Bill Gates in 1989, Corbis is headquartered in Seattle but has branches world wide.  In Italy it is represented by Contrasto.

Last update: 10/14/04