Description:
The Digital Image Database preserves the Colour Slide Archive of a large photo campaign that took place in 1943-1945 to document historically and artistically valuable paintings and interior decorations in buildings endangered by Allied air raids. It features circa 40,000 colour images from approx. 480 buildings in Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, Poland, and Russia, many of which were damaged or destroyed in the last three years of the WW2. Employing advanced digitalisation techniques, the database conserves the information quality of the slides which, due to the chemical-physical ageing process, had begun to severely deteriorate in the late 1990s. Thanks to the database's high resolution images, various mural and ceiling paintings could be restored in the past years. The database is available free of charge on the internet: The Digital Image Database preserves the Colour Slide Archive of Mural and Ceiling Painting, a large photo campaign that took place in 1943-1945 to document historically and artistically valuable paintings and interior decorations in buildings that were endangered due to Allied air raids. The database features circa 40,000 colour images from approx. 480 buildings in Austria, The Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, Poland, and Russia; many of them were damaged or even destroyed in the last three years of the Second World War. Employing advanced digitalisation techniques, the database conserves the information quality of the slides which, due to the chemical-physical ageing process, had begun to severely deteriorate in the late 1990s. Based on the database's high resolution images, various mural and ceiling paintings have been restored in the past years. The database is available free of charge on the internet: www.zi.photothek.org or www.bildindex.de.