POYi Archive

Search and Browse Tips

There are several ways to browse and search through the archives.

Photos

The archives contain nearly 40,000 photos and each photo is listed individually in the Browse Photos category. You may browse your way through the Items page by page. Click on a photo or the link underneath it to retrieve detailed information.

Collections

By Year

The photos are further divided into Collections. Since POYi is a yearly contest, each Collection represents a year.

Search

The site offers both Basic and Advanced Search options. Both are available via the Search link located at the top of all pages.

The POYi Archives

Pictures of the Year International (POYi) is privileged to unveil the POYi Archive.

This Archive Web site contains more then 38,000 photographs that have been recognized as the best in photojournalism over the past six decades — the most evocative images ever recorded.

POYi's collection of award winning photographs is a historical mirror on our society, our world events, as well as our daily life that goes beyond journalistic representation. This is an unparalleled resource for many academic disciplines including the arts, anthropology, political science, journalism, and the social sciences. Public schools also can benefit from this rich treasure with class projects on history, culture, and lifestyle trends.

The collection depicts a range of topics captured in our memories: the fall of the Berlin Wall; Robert Jackson's 1963 photograph of Lee Harvey Oswald as he is shot by Jack Ruby; student confrontations in the `60s; segregation in the South; the U.S. Presidency; and the space program.

We invite you to explore the site and provide us with your feedback. This is only the first phase of an ambitious effort to preserve the collection and make it accessible to a global audience. The images on this site are all low-resolution files with basic information, including the photographer's name and organization, caption information, the year and POYi number, plus some keywording. Next year we will begin the second phase to improve image quality by redigitizing all 38,000 photographs and to upgrade the search functions.

The archiving effort began in the early 1980s through a dedicated project by Randy Olson, then a University of Missouri graduate student, to catalog all the photographs from the first 44 years of POYi. In 2002, Matt Milios digitized and stored the collection on a localized server as part of his Masters project.

This current version of the Archive has been an 18-months goal to build a Web-based platform. The Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute provided substantial funding for the project. Graduate research assistants were recruited and computer equipment was purchased to prepare all 38,000 images. Then POYi collaborated with MU's School of Information Science and Learning Technologies to construct a Web-based platform.

With this launch, all 38,000 photographs are now accessible to a worldwide audience. The presentation of this visual record is unprecedented.

Pictures of the Year International is an educational and professional development program of the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute and affiliated with the Missouri School of Journalism. As an academic institution, POYi provides this archive as a free service for non-commercial research and educational purposes only.

--Rick Shaw, POYi Director