Go Here Now: The New York Times Brings Its Image Archive Back To Life On Tumblr

Photos from around the world being sorted in the New York Times' archive, a.k.a. the "morgue." (via The Lively Morgue)

"Oh super, another photo blog," you might be thinking as we (strongly) urge you to check out The Lively Morgue, which debuted last month. But hold up—this is not your run-of-the-mill, kaleidoscopic-oveload of information-style-Tumblr blog. The Lively Morgue was just aunched by the New York Times and it's a extraordinary glimpse into the newspaper's century-spanning pictorial archive.

The "morgue" comes from the long-standing nickname for that archive. "Explanations differ as to the origins of that name, but it's safe to say that the clippings were originally biographical and kept close at hand in case a subject dropped dead around deadline, requiring an instant obituary," the Times explains. The "lively," we imagine, refers to the cavalcade of exciting images that they are bringing back to life.

Of course the photographs are amazing to look at, but our favorite element is actually being able to flip each image over and see the reserve side; where photographers, journalists and editors jotted, typed, pasted and stamped each print with relevant information, before the days of computers and digital files.

The Times' collection is so vast that they've been unable to zero in on an exact number: 

How many? We don’t know. Our best guess is five million to six million prints and contact sheets (each sheet, of course, representing many discrete images) and 300,000 sacks of negatives, ranging in format size from 35 millimeter to 5 by 7 inches — at least 10 million frames in all. The picture archive also includes 13,500 DVDs, each storing about 4.7 gigabytes worth of imagery.

The Lively Morgue will feature a few photographs each week, since posting the entire Times archive would be quite a task. Even at 10 posts a day, they estimate that the print collection alone wouldn't be finished until the year 3935.

-- John Ruscher