Figure 1 – Robert Howlett’s portrait of : Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1857). From the Wikipedia and in the public domain because it is more than a 100 yrs. old and copyrights have expired. (This image is not from the MMA collection.)

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has released an amazing new  “Colossal” archive of 400,000 high resolution digital images from its collection. This archive is available for non-commercial purposes. Approximately 18,000 of these images are photographs spanning the nearly two centuries of photographic art.

I have been trying to understand how to best utilize the search feature of the Colossal archive.  However, so far no problem.  It’s just delightful fun to enjoy the images that randomly appear on the site.  There is always so much to learn. Just to get a sense of the depth and breadth of this collection you might start with Robert Howlett’s (1831-1858)’s well known image (Figure 1) of : Isambard Kingdom Brunel standing before the launching chains of the Great Eastern and then move on to Stephen Locke‘s timelapse video from My 10th of a Supercell forming over Climax Kansas.    It’s all about the image.