FotoBridge | Digitizing Photos Blog

Archie Rand is widely recognized as the world's most prominent painter of Jewish themes. As a painter, muralist, designer, and graphic artist his paintings have been featured for years, around the globe at the most respected and prestigious  galleries, shows and museums. These include The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Bibliotheque Nationale of Paris, The Israel Museum in Jerusalem, the Art Institute of Chicago and The Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

Mr. Rand studied at the Art Students League of New York under Larry Poons, who declared him to be the heir apparent of the 1960s art world. He then received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from Pratt Institute.  His first exhibition was in 1966 followed by at least 80 solo exhibitions and inclusion in 200 group exhibitions. He is a Laureate of the National Foundation for Jewish Culture, which awarded him the Achievement Medal for Contributions to the Visual Arts, joining him to the ranks of such talents as Itzhak Perlman, Philip Roth, Arthur Miller, and Elie Wiesel. He has been appointed as a Guggenheim Foundation Fellow and has received numerous other honors. Artforum has called Archie Rand “the most accomplished artist of his generation.”

Over the many years of his long career, Archie Rand photographically archived his collection of important painting and murals. "My inventory of transparencies was stored in binders that were shelved on bookcases, covering two adjacent walls. The entire archive needed to be digitally transferred so that the studio could update its organizational and communication capacities", said Mr Rand.

"Late to make the move to a pixelated reality, I conceded that slides are no longer the currency of image exchange -  I could no longer put off the inevitable." After researching secure ways to digitally convert his valued collection of thousands of 35mm Slides, Archie Rand choose FotoBridge for this important undertaking.

"The service at Fotobridge was terrific. Friendly, professional, and prompt - their offerings are priced competitively and they produced high quality results. Web-ready and print quality images were generated from each original and the index proofs offer a hard copy tally of each project.  Cross-filing data is now easily accommodated and immediate visual referencing and transmitting can be done at the keyboard.  Conveniently stored on discs, I can now slip selected histories of my production into my coat pocket.  I've put books on the bookcases." - Archie Rand, April 29, 2010.

Philadelphia University is celebrating 125 years of innovation in higher eduction this year.  And never has it's ambition to lead been more apparent then today. The university has  rapidly positioned itself to demonstrate the contemporary model for professional education well into the 21st century.  President Dr. Stephen Spinelli, armed with a new vision and strategic plan, is leading a top-notch team and student community into a promising future for the institution.

The year-long celebration makes it an exciting time to visit the beautiful, park-like campus in the city of brotherly love. It's also a significant milestone that demands reflection and tribute to the school's richly diverse heritage. As part of this significant commemoration, the university has been eagerly reclaiming and preparing a vast treasure of important archives and extraordinary content dating back to the 1880s.

As part of these efforts, the Office of Development and Alumni Relations engaged FotoBridge to digitally convert and unlock fovever over 17,000 pages containing more than 70,000 images from yearbooks dating back to 1927. The project included preparing legacy yearbooks for digital capture, creating full-resolution, reusable JPEG images, fully searchable pdfs and optimized, searchable digital yearbook portfolios. The effort also included off-site backup and recovery services for digital content.

Moorestown Friends School (MFS), one of the oldest schools in the nation, engaged FotoBridge in 2007 as its' exclusive provider of photographic digital conversion and archiving services. This multi-year assignment is supporting the renowned institution's preparations for it's 225th anniversary of it founding in the spring of 2010. Events and activities for alumni, parents and all members of the school community will continue through the following school year and culminate at Commencement in June 2011.

Much of the school's rich history, captured in a treasure trove of images on traditional photographic media, was at risk of deterioration or worse. Many of the photographic prints dated back to the late 1800s, some transparencies dated to the inception of the medium.  FotoBridge worked closely with MFS archivists to convert, index and digitally preserve some of the oldest images first, delivering thousands of high-resolution images to coincide with planned preliminary events and alumni activities. A primary objective of this three year program to digitize its significant, priceless collection of photographic negatives, slides and photo prints, is to make this newly digital content available online to alumni and important stakeholder groups.

Along with the vast collection of one-of-a-kind images, MFS selected FotoBridge's "Text Note Archiving" service to capture and index important archive metadata. The partnership between MFS and FotoBridge on this significant and critically important undertaking is expected to deliver well over 200,000 high quality, digitally archived images.