Part 1: Underground: The Corbis Image Vault
In Part 1 of The Invisible Photograph, see how a safe haven for millions of images happens to be hundreds of feet underground in a repurposed limestone mine.
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Part I: Underground
For a few days back in late December 2013, a small group of us found ourselves 250 feet underground, exploring the subterranean expanse of Iron Mountain, a former limestone mine located in rural Western Pennsylvania, about an hour and a half’s drive north of Pittsburgh. You reach Iron Mountain on a windy road dotted with farmlands until you finally arrive at a nondescript parking lot and a guard station. Over 2,500 people work in this place, one of many Iron Mountain sites across the country, but you would never guess the immensity of it until you’re inside.
Here among data centers, governmental document storage facilities (including the National Archives and US Social Security), and vast collections of television and film celluloid reels (like Warner Brothers and Universal Studios), sits a repository of a very different kind of material. The Corbis Iron Mountain Archive houses over eleven million photographic…
The entry into Iron Mountain is foreboding and austere - a gaping hole in the side of a mountain. And you're only allowed to photograph there with special permission. So…
Taking this GigaPan was a total trip. It's literally the only place in the miles and miles of underground tunnels that's approved for the high level of detail typical of…
I took this GigaPan with my back against the rough-hewn limestone walls of the vault. For the sake of orientation, picture this: the white wall to the left is on…
This is, by far, one of the toughest GigaPans I've ever shot. The lighting conditions were challenging to say the least. But give up the chance to GigaPan a man-made…