The Photographic Archive of the American Academy in Rome is pleased to announce the release of a new collection on its Digital Humanities Center: The Fototeca Unione Collection
Thanks to a five-year grant from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, it was possible to process the entire collection of the Fototeca Unione: 29,127 images have been cataloged and digitized. One of the most exhaustive resources on Roman Archaeology and Topography is now available to scholars on the Academy’s Digital Humanities Center.
The Fototeca Unione was founded by Ernest Nash as a center of visual research in ancient Roman architecture and topography. The original patrimony donated by Nash to the International Union of Institutes of Archaeology, History and History of Art numbered 3,135 negatives and 1,500 photographic prints. The American Academy in Rome has housed this collection since 1956. The photographs taken by Nash beginning with his first visit to Italy are still considered an important visual resource for the study of ancient monuments. Over the years, while Nash was the Director of the Fototeca, the original nucleus on Rome and ancient Italy was augmented by photos of the Roman Empire (many of them taken by Nash himself) and of medieval monuments, as well as reproductions from other archives and relevant graphic documentation. Nash’s most significant images were used in his publication “Pictorial Dictionary of Ancient Rome” (1962). After the death of Nash in 1974, the Fototeca Unione grew until 1992, from 14,000 to ca. 30,000 negatives with new photographic campaigns in Italy, North Africa, and the Middle East.