Fotofestiwal joins the Fortepan Method project

Together we will create an international digital archive of the 20th century consisting of photos from the private collections. The Fortepan Archive began many years ago in Budapest. It was inspired by a plastic bag full of anonymous photographs found in a dumpster in Budapest.

Today, the archive includes 172,379 photos, which can be viewed at www.fortepan.hu/en. All of them are available under the open Creative Commons license, which means that they can be freely viewed, used and printed. As a result, an unique archive is created, accessible to all, telling the history of Europe from the beginning of photography to 1990. The history of everyday life, streets that have long disappeared, joyful moments and ordinary life in the shadow of great political events – all this can be found at www.fortepan.hu/ en.

Fortepan is a truly exciting initiative, potentially making a participant out of anyone of us. The online archive promotes the survival of the photos submitted by donors and commemorates the people featured in the photos, thereby giving additional meaning to the exertion required when making and preserving photographs. It also provides and presents evidence, enhanced by the information and conclusions drawn from the common well of knowledge. It does so in such a way that the collective knowledge is then made fully accessible to everyone.

Co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union.

photo: Fortepan / N. Kósa Judit