The After Alice Project launches online Yorkshire photo archive
Wednesday, 6 September 2017
Based at the Birchcliffe Centre in Hebden Bridge the After Alice Project has launched an online photo archive of Yorkshire - with a difference.
The After Alice Project began in March 2015 when a small group of photographers based in Hebden Bridge met in a pub and decided to create a photo archive with a difference. They work only with new photos not old ones and they only shoot on film.
They shoot every photo on good old-fashioned film because current estimates are that, properly kept, film will last for at least four centuries.
- Taking the 'Old photos' of Yorkshire for the future - 10,000 images so far in over 100 town and villages.
- Photos shot only on good old-fashioned film.
- A 100-year archive project with space for over a quarter of a million images.
- Community based but archiving to professional standards.
- Images are free for all to use non-commercially (Creative Commons).
Prompted by Vint Cerf's (vice-chairman of Google) prediction of 'black hole' in photographic records because of the digital photography and inspired by the late Alice Longstaff of Hebden Bridge whose collection goes back to the 1870's – they decided to record everyday life in this county and to document and store the images to museum standards.
They plan to keep the archive going for at least 100 years and they regard it as a 'gift to the Yorkshire of the future'.
This week marks the launch the online version of this fully searchable archive with over 10,000 photos covering more than 100 Yorkshire towns, villages and cities so far, and they've only just started. Every image is carefully titled, captioned, key-worded and has it's map location included. They have space on their site for over a quarter of a million images.
The people of Yorkshire can get involved with the project in several ways: by contributing images, adding names and valuable local knowledge to photos already on the site and by helping to maintain the archive and website. It's open to anyone of any age who lives in Yorkshire. If you're interested in joining in you can contact the project via their website www.theafteraliceproject.org
Quotes:
“A boring High Street shot taken now will be fascinating in the 50 years time when driverless cars and street cleaning robots are the norm” (H. Gregg – The After Alice Project)
"Piles of digitised material – from blogs, tweets, pictures and videos, to official documents such as court rulings and emails – may be lost forever because the programs needed to view them will become defunct," Google’s vice-president has warned (source: The Guardian - Friday 13 February 2015)
About the Project
The After Alice Project does not receive public funding. Contributors buy their own film and donate the negatives and copyright on the images to the project. All costs are paid by members. Members are all volunteers and no-one receives benefits (monetary or any other kind) from the organisation.
All of the images are Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND (free for non-commercial use).
Award
The project won the 'Best New Community Archive' in 2016 from the CAHG (Community Archives division of the ARA).
The project is sponsored by ILFORD who provide film at at reduced cost to the project.
Membership
Membership is open to anyone who lives in or has a strong connection with Yorkshire. The project is open to commissions from companies and organisations who want their activities archived for future generations.
Links
Website: www.theafteraliceproject.org
Email: after.alice@yahoo.co.uk