img: The Pietà of Michelangelo Buonarroti, St. Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City, 1920-1930, by Fratelli Alinari, © Alinari Archives

PHOTOCONSORTIUM welcomes a new member in the association: Fratelli Alinari Idea S.p.A.

Founded in Florence in 1852, Fratelli Alinari is the oldest firm in the world working in the field of photography, the image and communication. The birth of photography and the story of the Firm go hand in hand in their development and growth, as attested to by the immense Alinari owned fund of 5.500.000 photographs, collected in the Alinari Archives. This fund is continuously growing and, thanks to a rational policy of new acquisitions and new photographic campaigns, it ranges from daguerreotypes to modern color photos.
In 1852 Leopoldo Alinari, with his brothers Giuseppe and Romualdo, founded the photographic workshop, heart of the firm that still bears his name. It was the beginning of a unique endeavor that specialized in photographic portraiture, views of works of art and historical monuments, and achieved immediate national and international renown. Today the name of Alinari guarantees a century of experience and state of the art professional technology.
In 2001 the Digital Archive was inaugurated. It continues to grow and progress constantly with images that can be consulted on line. Today there are over 350,000 pictures available on the Alinari Archives business site and 100,000 in the education section.
Alinari is a leader in Photographic Publishing, and its Art Printworks is the only one in the world still using the artisan technique of collotype on paper and on silver plate from photographic images. Alinari is an irreplaceable point of reference for preserving, cataloguing, circulating and handing down, through the photograph, the history, society, art and culture of Italy and Europe.

Website: www.alinari.com