We learn from PetaPixel that the world’s oldest photography museum, The George Eastman House in Rochester, New York has joined the Google Art Project.  Pictures from the Eastman House on the Google Art Project may be found at this link.

Google Art Project is an online platform which gives the visitor access to high-resolution images of artworks from the projects partner museums.  Google launched the project in February of 2011.  Beyond high resolution images the project offers Google Earth style walk-throughs of the physical museums and a single image chosen to be captured as a gigapixel image.  The Art Project promotes Google’s view that we are in a period of cultural democratization.  The control of knowledge and its dissemination is no longer controlled by a small elite.

At this point it is, perhaps, interesting to consider the works initially chosen by the Eastman House as representative of the history of photography.  We see many of the same faces that we have discussed previously in this blog.  This includes: Julia Margaret Cameron, Oscar Reijlander, Edward S. Curtis, and, Dorothea Lange.  Visiting the Eastman House in this way is exciting and I look forward to other major photography collections coming online in this way