Last but not least: Ringier gives away its picture archive
The Ringier publishing house is donating its photo archive to the Aargau State Archives. This comes almost at the same time as the 50th anniversary of the daily newspaper *Blick*. The donation is a well-considered gesture.
Over the decades, 7 million positives from the various areas of the publishing house have been collected. These were cataloged on index cards at great expense and without IT until the end of the 1990s. Ringier is now handing over the physical collection to the State Archives of the Canton of Aargau. According to Fotointern.ch, quite a few companies in the Swiss media scene have "replaced" their image archives, or disposed of them directly following changes in ownership, as was the case with Weltwoche.
The gift to the public, endowed with additional financial resources from Ringier and the support of the Swisslos Fund for the reappraisal, has been carefully considered. Apart from the fact that it safeguards to a certain extent the dedicated work of the existing archivists, it represents a logical continuation of the project to digitize the photo archives and market them through the Ringier subsidiary Specter, which began four years ago. According to Fotointern.ch, Specter will continue to offer those images that are of commercial importance within the Group and to third-party customers.
The gift to the public, endowed with additional financial resources from Ringier and the support of the Swisslos Fund for the reappraisal, has been carefully considered. Apart from the fact that it safeguards to a certain extent the dedicated work of the existing archivists, it represents a logical continuation of the project to digitize the photo archives and market them through the Ringier subsidiary Specter, which began four years ago. According to Fotointern.ch, Specter will continue to offer those images that are of commercial importance within the Group and to third-party customers.
