Organization Profile
Watkins Photo Archive Project
http://www.watkinsphotoarchive.com/Longtime Fresno community photographer and retired attorney, Howard K. Watkins, has partnered with the Fresno Regional Foundation and the Henry Madden Library at CSU Fresno to establish the Howard K. Watkins Photographic Archive Project. The Project’s goal is to make much of Howard’s more than 300,000 photographs publicly accessible as an online historical archive. The collection includes photographs of elected officials at all levels of government, community and business leaders, members of the judiciary and legal community, celebrities, numerous community groups, events, parades, political rallies, athletes, historic buildings, several award winning photographs, and much more. The collection is one of the largest of its kind documenting much of the greater Fresno/Clovis area since the 1970’s and leading the City and the County of Fresno to designate Howard as their current Photo Laureate. Howard will be devoting his time to help input identifying information for photographs made available online. The initial cost for the Project included $100,000 to have his 120,000 negatives professionally scanned into photographs. Those photographs, plus Howard’s more recent digital photographs, cost $50,000 to put online, and another $150,000 to include and maintain well into the future a comprehensive index and archival storage system. The amount of funding raised will directly impact the number of photographs to be indexed and made available free of charge to the public.
