behind the scenes – the digitisation and cataloguing of Mark De Fraeyes photographic legacy

2020 Mark De Fraeye donated his complete photographic premature legacy to the independent and pluralist, public utility ›King Baudouin Foundation‹ in Brussels, Belgium. This was accompanied by the decision to house the physical collection in the premises of akg-images in Berlin.

About 40.000 photos on reversal medium format film, several series of black-and-white artist’s proofs as well as a collection of historical photographs from the 19^th and 20^th centuries compiled by De Fraeye arrived in 2020 in boxes and cartons partially sorted by countries, cities and recording days at akg-images Berlin. Since then the photographic collection has been sorted, material and archive properly packaged and is now being stored on shelves and in archive cabinets in climate-adapted rooms.

In a further step, each image was given a consecutive inventory number and entered into the agency’s digital database. A written record of the basic data, such as dates, names and technical information followed, as well as keywording of the images to make them easier to find for customers in the agency catalogue.

So far data for more than 11.400 images has been recorded in our database in that sort. 8.500 of these images have already been professionally digitized, the scans have undergone appropriate image editing and the digital copies have been made accessible on our website.

Below you can see a cart with historical photographs from the ›Collection Mark De Fraeye‹ that are now waiting to be digitalised and will be continuously added to the akg-images website for you to discover!

A special thank you for the professional archiving, the systematic written recordings and the digitization of the image material goes to Françoise Kuntz, Dr. Axel Schmidt and Dieter Hoppe.