Reps Photo Collection Included in New Library Digital Collections Portal

Bastides, a collection of photos of planned towns in southwestern France taken by Emeritus Professor John Reps, is now viewable through the Cornell University Library's recently launched Digital Collections Portal.

Reps began his exploration of the towns in the 1950s, and continued to document them for the next 60 years. Selected from the thousands of photos, each of the more than 2,500 images in the digital collection has been plotted on an interactive map, allowing viewers to navigate the towns, compare images of the same locations over time, and access a Google Street View for the location depicted in each photo.

This collection continues Cornell's efforts to make Reps's photo collections available online. Urban Explorer: The John Reps Travel Photographs, which documents planning practices and responses to urban issues from 15 countries, was published electronically in 2013.

The Bastide photos were also the subject of a 2015 exhibition in the Bibliowicz Family Gallery at AAP titled John Reps: Glorious Bastides: A Journey Through Time.