Susanna Capannini
Content creator , PHOTOCONSORTIUM
Since 2014, the Europeana Aggregator PHOTOCONSORTIUM – International Consortium for Photographic Heritage has been devoted to the promotion, enhancement and reuse of the culture of photography and photographic heritage. On their 10th anniversary, they celebrate their story!
PHOTOCONSORTIUM Association was founded in Bratislava in November 2014 as a result of Europeana Photography (2012-2015), an aggregation project which digitised around 500,000 heritage photographs from a large group of European archives, press agencies and museums. The project uncovered and made available online on Europeana.eu a wealth of cultural collections that had never been showcased to the public before. In the successful aftermath of the project, members of the original consortium decided to stick together and form an association, to continue work to bring to light and preserve public and private photographic archives through digitisation.
Today, with over 40 members from all over Europe, PHOTOCONSORTIUM represents a centre of expertise and knowledge on digitisation, aggregation of content to Europeana.eu and other portals, metadata standards, indexing, cataloguing and controlled vocabularies, best practices for the management of digital archives, and much more. This expertise and knowledge allows us to lead activities and provide services, participate in new research, and to organise photographic, co-creative and participative exhibitions, events, seminars, conferences and training courses.
Since 2016, PHOTOCONSORTIUM has been the expert hub on photography for Europeana.eu. We operate as an accredited aggregator specialising in the domain of photographic collections, offering services to public and private organisations to help them to make their metadata available for publication in Europeana.eu.
With a proven track record of collaborative projects funded or co-funded by the European Commission, PHOTOCONSORTIUM has expanded our expertise in the creation and reuse of digital cultural content, and focused our work to support cultural institutions in their digital transformation process, workflows and engagement with stakeholders'' communities.
As a milestone initiative that will shape the future of our sector, PHOTOCONSORTIUM was also delighted to join the common European data space for cultural heritage as a consortium partner when it was launched in 2022. Building upon the work of the Europeana Initiative, the data space comprises cutting-edge infrastructure, a vibrant community and a suite of products, frameworks and tools which facilitate the open and trustworthy sharing of heritage data across Europe. PHOTOCONSORTIUM fully embraces the data space’s vision to make more high-quality content available, particularly in 3D, to foster reuse of digitised cultural resources and to provide more opportunities for the community to offer enriched services, thanks to the use of advanced technologies.
Besides creating tools and services to help institutions create digital content, PHOTOCONSORTIUM aspires to foster reuse of digitised (photographic and cultural) heritage in scientific research and in education. This can help people to connect with other cultures and experiences, learn more about our past and create bonds that prevail in both time and space.
We pursue this aim both through the creation of educational content on dedicated platforms such as Historiana, and through the organisation of photographic exhibitions and participative events. Throughout the years, PHOTOCONSORTIUM has created exhibitions in virtual and physical formats on various themes (such as the history of the fifties, migration and Chinese heritage in Europe). In some cases, we took a participative approach by crowdsourcing content from people and citizens who contributed with their own vintage family photos and sharing their stories on Europeana.eu.
David Iglésias Franch, President of PHOTOCONSORTIUM, says, ‘The Photography period corresponds to the 160 years of history that lie between the engraving era and the advent of digital technology. The exploration of this period is fundamental to understanding the secular evolution of modern visual culture. Based on this idea, PHOTOCONSORTIUM has been weaving different projects based on the image heritage and projected into the digital realm.’
With EUreka3D (2023-2024) and EUreka3D-XR (2025-2026) PHOTOCONSORTIUM, as coordinator of both these data space supporting projects, is following the technological evolution of digitisation by moving towards a more intensive use of 3D technologies. While we tend to think about photography and audiovisual heritage as a 2D thing, digital access to heritage photography is not exclusively 2D: beyond the actual photographs, archives and museums preserve plenty of equipment, cameras, lenses, props and more vulnerable items that can not be handled without risking serious damage. 3D digitisation helps the public to explore multidimensional fragile objects from across the globe, through a device such as a laptop or mobile phone, or onsite with XR and AR experiences.
Additionally, the possibility of using 3D to virtually reconstruct lost buildings or historical sites and use such content in interactive applications heavily relies on archival materials to be available in digital form. The EUreka3D project created a dedicated suite of tools and services for institutions to store, manage and share datasets of 3D cultural collections, creating a direct entry point to Europeana.eu and the data space for cultural heritage.
The work will continue in the EUreka3D-XR project with development of tools and pilot cases for reusing 3D collections in hybrid XR and AR applications that engage user communities with cultural contents. Feedback on, and participation in, these piloting actions is very welcome, as is the evaluation and testing of these tools and methodologies by cultural heritage institutions. Contact us and access all resources through EUreka3D website, and see an example of a 3D model digitised with EUreka3D below! This item is also available on Europeana.eu.
The PHOTOCONSORTIUM Association is non for profit, and participation is open to organisations and individuals based on an annual membership fee. Find out more, and discover our work as an aggregator to make available your photographic and cultural collections to Europeana.eu. You can View all 2D and 3D collections aggregated by PHOTOCONSORTIUM on Europeana.eu.
