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Monday, April 15, 2002

By Marylynne Pitz, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

Past rural Butler County fields and 220 feet below a limestone mine called Iron Mountain lies a private vault that holds a priceless, pictorial history of the 19th and 20th centuries.

	A picture of Babe Ruth making his debut as a coach for the Brooklyn Dodgers on June 19, 1938, is part of the Bettmann Archive in Iron Mountain. (Steve Mellon, Post-Gazette)

These are the new headquarters of Corbis, the company owned by Microsoft tycoon Bill Gates that licenses images from the renowned Bettmann Archive and 10 million news photos from the United Press International collection.

Once stored in a cramped New York City building, the photo archive resides in a new digital lab and innovative cold-storage facility that opened on April 1. The cold temperature stops prints and negatives from fading and deteriorating any further.

"The colder you make it, the longer it lasts. That's all there is to it," said Ken Johnston, manager of historical collections for Corbis.

The Bettmann Archive was created by the late Otto Ludwig Bettmann, a Jewish rare book curator, musician and author who fled Nazi Germany in 1935 carrying two steamer trunks packed with 25,000 images.

While in Berlin, Bettmann realized the value of photographs when he used a new invention, the 35-millimeter Leica camera, to record manuscript collections.

His recognition of the importance of the medium paid off as photographs became a staple of journalism in the 1930s. A savvy, visionary businessman good at making connections, Bettmann obtained pictures of people engaged in all sorts of activities, especially in the past, and sold them to newspapers, book publishers, magazines, television producers and advertisers.

The collection he amassed in the process has become one of the largest and most important in the world.

This photographic negative from the 1890s shows obvious signs of deterioration. Conditions at the new archive are designed to stop further deterioration. (Stever Mellon, Post-Gazette)

Outside the Corbis vault's entrance, snapshots of celebrities and champions flash continuously on a flat television screen. Carry Nation crusades against liquor, Marilyn Monroe stretches exuberantly, young George Harrison smiles impishly and movie actress Lauren Bacall rolls her eyes.

Beyond the front doors, photography's past, present and future abide in 10,000 square feet of space, including a large room where the temperature stays 45 degrees and will, eventually, go to 4 below zero.

Straight ahead is a wooden card catalogue, like the antique model still used in some local libraries, that holds the index to International News Photos taken between 1930 and 1956. When United Press bought INP, a Hearst organization, United Press International was born.

To your left stand two tall, zero-degree freezers, home of the "Very Important Photos," including negatives and prints from World Wars I and II, the Vietnam War, Jimi Hendrix wailing on his guitar at Woodstock plus the Kennedys, Roosevelts and Rockefellers.

Other best-selling faces that are just chillin' include Albert Einstein sticking out his tongue, Rosa Parks at the front of the bus, Babe Ruth, Elvis Presley, Jackie Robinson and Martin Luther King.

A few steps away is a digital lab where a photograph of young Henry Ford astride his flivver can be scanned and reproduced in minutes by Dina Keil, an image technician.

The lesser-known images are among Johnston's favorites.

"There's a great shot of a baby, dressed as Eisenhower, leaning over a military map of Europe. The color photograph, he said, is "a cutesy shot" from the 1940s.

Another photograph shows former President Richard Nixon bowling at the White House in 1971.

"It's just amazing to see the interior design taste of the time. He's standing in front of this wall that is the loudest patterned wallpaper I have ever seen," Johnston said.

Among the stereographs is a sepia-toned photo from 1906 that shows a husband lacing up his wife's corset.

The lab staff can can photos digitally and deliver them to clients, said Marc Osborn , a Corbis spokesman.

Eileen Flanagan, director of worldwide research for Corbis, said the move allows company employees to use, sort and preserve the collection in the spacious vault, where the pictures are removed from such daily enemies as heat, humidity and light as well as drastically reducing the risk of fire, flood and terrorism.

"It is so much easier to access this material compared to the room we were jammed into at 902 Broadway," Flanagan siad.

In New York City, Flanagan recalled, "We had to take a look at the index in the cold room. We couldn't open two drawers at the same time in one aisle. Some of the older file cabinets started to rust at the end because of the weight of all the negatives."

To open those drawers, "You just had to pull like hell," Flanagan said.

The move to Iron Mountain allowed Corbis to repair rusty drawers.

"It's like we moved from a brownstone which is quaint and nice with critters, bad electricity and no cable to a nice, brand new high rise that's nicely lit. There's a doorman and you can get deliveries," Flanagan said.

For a researcher, a daylong visit to Corbis will cost $100. An extensive project that demands a lot of research and low resolution scanning will cost $500.

Information and photos are posted at www.corbis.com.