Mercedes-Benz Digital Photography Exhibit

One of the greatest photographers of the 20th century, Zoltan Glass was commissioned by Daimler-Benz AGz in the 1920s and 1930s to take many photographs of Mercedes-Benz vehicles. He even documented the period of the classic Silver Arrows, the cars that dominated international grand prix racing from 1934 onwards.

Now Zoltan Glass’ work will be showcased at the National Media Museum in Bradford, UK, where many of his main creative shots from the 1930s and 1950s, will be accessible in digital format.

The work is scheduled for completion in April 2010, as the Bradford collection numbers around 6,000 images in total.

The brand’s production vehicles were also photographed by Glass for publicity material. He managed to turn uninspiring subjects, such as Mercedes-Benz vehicle production, into aesthetically pleasing images.

After the death of Zoltan Glass in 1981, his photographic legacy was acquired by the National Media Museum, which houses one of Europe’s most important photographic collections.

Daimler AG has now requested that his work to be cataloged and digitized. The project also involves feeding the original photograph captions into the database and reproducing the images in their original sequence.

The technology used enables the negatives to be photographed in high resolution using a calibrated high-end medium-format camera in order to create a neutral copy of the original. The results are first saved as files of approximately 100 megabytes in TIFF format.

Finally, special software is used to convert the negative images into positives. Once the work is complete, the photographs will be available for further historical editorial work and other projects.