Getty Images publishes rare photos in new Instagram feed

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Travelling first class, Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger on a train at Euston Station, with Marianne Faithfull reclining out of view. Along with the rest of the Beatles, they were heading to Bangor, Wales, for a conference on transcendental meditation. | August 25, 1967 | ?: Victor Blackman/Express/Getty Images #gettyflashback

A post shared by Getty Images Archive (@gettyarchive) on Oct 18, 2017 at 12:32am PDT

Getty Images has just created a new Instagram account as a platform to share its 80,000,000 photograph archive.

Albert Einstein, JFK and The Beatles are have all been chronicled in the @gettyflashback feed so far, alongside photographs from the launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger and protests for women’s right to vote.

The photos from the Getty Images Hulton Archive are uploaded daily to bring the forgotten images to a new social media audience.

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In British slang, a beano means something in between an outing and a party or, as this image helpfully depicts, a knees-up. In 1955, the great Bert Hardy joined a group of women revellers on a beano to the seaside, who brought their own accordionist and hollow legs with them… | ?: Bert Hardy/Picture Post #GettyFlashback #FridayVibes

A post shared by Getty Images Archive (@gettyarchive) on Oct 13, 2017 at 3:53am PDT

Curator of the archive Melanie Hough told Amateur Photographer: “We hope those following the feed feel that bit closer to history and discover something new.

“Be it seeing an iconic image with a fresh perspective or a story lost were it not for the photographs.”

The photographs are accompanied by captions marking their origin and stories behind them, curated by the editors and researchers working at the archive.

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Four men climbing Brooklyn Bridge in New York City back in April 1926 as part of a test for applicants wishing to be appointed to paint the bridge | ?: Topical Press Agency/Getty Images #GettyFlashback

A post shared by Getty Images Archive (@gettyarchive) on Oct 22, 2017 at 3:35am PDT

The team has been scanning and publishing thousands of archival images each year online on the Getty Images website but they still estimate that less than 1% of the archive is currently uploaded.

Hough added that they chose Instagram as the platform because of its capability to share their abundance of photos to an increasing number of people.

In the coming months, the team will also be using the feed to highlight the conservation work that goes on behind the scenes at the archive.

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On 23rd October 1915, some 25,000 supporters of the women’s vote marched through New York – earlier that same year a suffrage bill had been defeated in Congress. It was another five years before the Nineteenth Amendment was passed. ?: Paul Thompson/Topical Press Agency/Getty Images #gettyflashback

A post shared by Getty Images Archive (@gettyarchive) on Oct 23, 2017 at 5:56am PDT

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