"Gone With the Wind" premiering. Hank Aaron homering. Maynard Jackson's political star rising. Atlanta's skyline eternally growing.
The visuals from these and many more essential Atlanta stories spanning the 20th century are being donated by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution to the Georgia State University Library. The AJC's Photographic Archives will be digitized by the GSU Library, with the first images expected to be available to the public online in the next year.
The AJC archive includes 600 bankers' boxes of prints and untold sleeves of negatives, most from 1980 to 2000 but some dating from decades earlier and including images taken for the old Atlanta Journal-Constitution Sunday Magazine.
The newspaper's archive "significantly enhances the collection of research materials available in Atlanta," said Nancy Seamans, GSU dean of libraries.
Milestones captured in the collection include Martin Luther King Jr.'s funeral observances, Jimmy Carter's rise from the statehouse to the White House, and the 1996 Centennial Olympic Games.
"With this donation we hope to foster creativity, positively impact the education of future generations and enrich the life of the local community," said Julia Wallace, editor of the AJC and ajc.com.
GSU dean Seamans called the AJC's Photographic Archives a nice complement to two photographic collections already part of the GSU Library's holdings. The Lane Brothers and Tracey O'Neal commercial photography collections include more than 350,000 images of Atlanta from the 1930s to the 1960s.
"The way that Georgia State has developed in Atlanta parallels this 20th century collection of photography, making it an appropriate place" to house the AJC's photo archive, Seamans said.
The AJC prints, mostly black and white, were filed by subjects; the negatives were filed chronologically. Seamans said the process of archiving and indexing the materials would be extensive, demanding several years of work by GSU archivists. Photos of the broadest interest and highest importance will be posted online first, she said.
Seamans called the AJC prints and negatives, with their accompanying photograpers' notes "untold treasures."
"We have no idea what we’re going to come across, and it’s very exciting."
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