Lee Miller Archives
Opening one of the 20th century's most significant photographic legacies to the world.
Over 60,000 original negatives, 20,000 prints and thousands of documents. Aetopia helped Lee Miller Archives bring an extraordinary collection online, with the scale and resilience to handle global demand from day one.
The background.
Lee Miller (1907-1977) was one of the most significant creative figures of the 20th century. A Surrealist photographer, a model in Paris alongside Man Ray and Picasso, and later a celebrated war photographer who documented the Blitz and the liberation of Buchenwald and Dachau, her body of work is of immense historical and artistic importance.
Her legacy, comprising more than 60,000 original negatives, 20,000 prints and thousands of documents and manuscripts, is held by her family at Farley Farm House in Sussex, England. For years, only a small selection of her work had been available online. Her family had been carefully digitising thousands of "Never Seen Before" images in preparation for a major public launch.
They needed a cloud-based digital asset management platform powerful enough to handle the entire Lee Miller legacy, with the search capability, rights management and scalability to serve a global audience from launch day.
The challenge.
Four problems standing between a great archive and a global audience.
Highly valuable original documents at risk
Over 60,000 original negatives and 20,000 prints held in physical form, with no digital backup or governance framework to protect them from loss or deterioration over time.
An enormous archive with no scalable home
The existing website could only surface a small fraction of the collection. The archive had no digital infrastructure capable of growing to hold and serve tens of thousands of high-value assets to a global audience.
Limited website unable to handle the launch
The planned public launch on Lee Miller's birthday was expected to attract significant press coverage and a sharp spike in traffic. The existing infrastructure had no ability to scale on demand to meet it.
Complex rights and licensing requirements
Prints retail from £640 to £1,240. The archive needed to manage multiple request types for reproduction, exhibition, research access and restricted metadata, with controlled licensing workflows for publishers, exhibitors and academics worldwide.
"Aetopia were able to provide us with a complete solution, including initial consultancy, software customisation and hosting on the cloud. This was particularly beneficial when we launched, as the coverage in the papers led to a surge in website visitors. Aetopia were able to quickly ramp up processing power."
"This is the exciting moment when we are able to realise our long-term objective to share thousands of Lee's images, many never seen before. In time we intend to make all images available along with a selection of work by other photographers in her circle."
The work, step by step.
Digitised, indexed, published and protected at scale.
Sequential scanning, digitisation and cloud OCR indexing
Aetopia worked with the archive to digitise the collection in structured phases, reprocessing scans through cloud OCR to create accurate, searchable text records indexed against each asset, making the archive fully discoverable for the first time.
Cloud-based DAM with powerful public picture library
Aetopia built and deployed a cloud-hosted DAM platform with a public-facing picture library featuring faceted search, filtering by artist, subject, era and location, and the ability to scale instantly to meet surges in visitor demand.
Scalable AWS infrastructure for a high-profile launch
The platform was deployed on AWS, enabling the archive to scale processing capacity rapidly when press coverage at launch drove a sharp spike in visitors. Additional capacity was spun up quickly and stood down once demand stabilised.
Rights and licensing management for commercial use
Aetopia configured a structured request system covering reproduction, exhibition, research, non-public image access and restricted metadata requests. The archive can review, approve and fulfil licensing requests from publishers, exhibitors and academics through a single governed workflow.
The results.
Aetopia Digital Collections
Built for collections that matter.
Aetopia's digital collections platform helps arts organisations, archives and estates preserve, organise and publish their most important assets, with powerful search, rights management and the scalability to grow alongside the collection.