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TASS historic collection of photographs digitized with support from VTB bank

VTB Bank and Russia’s TASS News Agency finish a large-scale project to digitize and classify the unique historic archive of TASS photographs dated from the early XX century
VTB’s First Deputy President, Chairman of the Management Board Vasily Titov (left), TASS’s Director General Sergei Mikhailov (center) and TASS’s reporter Alexei Litvyakov (right) at a news conference, devoted to end of the TASS-VTB Bank project to digitize the agency’s historic archive of photographs TASS/Mikhail Dzhaparidze
VTB’s First Deputy President, Chairman of the Management Board Vasily Titov (left), TASS’s Director General Sergei Mikhailov (center) and TASS’s reporter Alexei Litvyakov (right) at a news conference, devoted to end of the TASS-VTB Bank project to digitize the agency’s historic archive of photographs
© TASS/Mikhail Dzhaparidze

TASS Director General Sergei Mikhailov and VTB Bank’s First Deputy President, Chairman of the Management Board Vasily Titov discussed results of the project, which is unique on the Russian media market. Noteworthy, the project was completed in 2016 – a special year for the biggest photo-news agency in Russia and the CIS – TASS Photo Archive, which has celebrated its 90th anniversary.

The work to preserve the unique historic archive of TASS photographs lasted for two years. Specialists digitized, scanned and filed more than 850,000 pictures and captions from the early 1920s and to the late 1980s. The work was organized inside the TASS photo service, thus the originals were most safe and always at hand.

Now that the project is over, all photographs have been scanned and stored to the TASS photo service on tassphoto.com – they are available both to professionals and to the public. Most photographs in the archive have not been published earlier. Every restored snapshot carries the caption “The photo archive restored with support from VTB.”

The project is reflected in a photo album “All Country,” which shows snapshots of major historic events in every decade of the XX century.

VTB’s First Deputy President, Chairman of the Management Board Vasily Titov commented on the successful project. “We are proud of the bank’s input in preservation of the country’s historic and cultural heritage,” he said. “Being digitized, the vast archive of TASS photographs will be available for every specialist, for every person interested in Russia’s history.”

“The archive is a biography of this country,” TASS’s Director General Sergei Mikhailov said. “Here are all great and major events of the XX century, the history of industrial giants, conquering of the Arctic and of the space, victories in sports, images of prominent persons and many-many more.” “We have received truly valuable material, and of course, we shall continue working with it,” he added.