Ringier: Seven million photos for the canton of Aargau

Ringier is donating seven million photos to the State Archives of the Canton of Aargau. These are images from newspaper and magazine production that the publishing house archived from 1930 to 1999. The collection is the largest photo archive in Switzerland and is considered a «treasure trove of images.».

Editorial - October 13, 2009

Marc Walder, Managing Director of Ringier Switzerland, said at a media conference in Aarau on Tuesday that it was important to Ringier that the photographs be preserved and made accessible to researchers and the public. The picture archive is "a unique cultural and historical treasure". Ringier is parting with its analogue image archive because the editorial teams have been working with digitized images since 2000. Working with physically existing images no longer met the requirements of daily work, Walder emphasized.
The "Ringier Photo Documentation" consists of prints, negatives, slides and glass plates. Ringier or the photographers retain the copyrights to the images. The range of topics covered by the photographic material includes public life, Swiss and international politics, sport, culture, everyday life and women's history. According to the State Archives, the archive is a "visual memory of Switzerland".

Ringier contributes to archiving costs
The public archiving of the photos will now give researchers and, at a later date, the entire population new access to their own, Swiss and world history. Aargau is spending 900,000 francs from the Swisslos fund on this work. Ringier is also contributing to the costs. The Ringier company was founded over 175 years ago in Zofingen AG. For this reason, too, the collaboration was an obvious choice, said Ringier Managing Director Walder. Ringier had also held talks with the National Museum and the National Library regarding the acquisition of the physical image archive.