Getty Images, a preeminent global visual content creator and marketplace, today announced a partnership with Epson, a global leader in photo and document scanning, to provide professional photo scanners and technical training to winners of the Getty Images Photo Archive Grants for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs).

Epson will provide professional‑grade photo scanners to support the photo digitization process onsite at the campus of each of the four Getty Images Photo Archive Grant recipients—Claflin University, Jackson State University, North Carolina Central University and Prairie View A&M University.

The equipment will include an Epson Expression 12000XL photo scanner, valued at $3,999 (MSRP) per unit. Epson’s equipment will help bring over 100,000 newly digitized photos to the schools and content will be available for licensing for non‑commercial use on www.gettyimages.com. Epson will also gift one scanner to each HBCU grant recipient, train university staff and students to continue digitizing their photo libraries for years to come.

“The work we are doing is vital to supporting HBCUs with their mission of preserving their history and making rarely seen images more accessible to the world,” said Cassandra Illidge, VP of Partnerships at Getty Images. “We are grateful to our partners at Epson who have joined the program by providing the hardware and technology needed to support all HBCUs in this important endeavor.”

Getty Images launched the inaugural grant program in June 2021, in partnership with the Getty Family and Stand Together, committing $500,000 to digitize up to 100,000 archival photos to help preserve the invaluable photographic history of HBCUs. All revenue from the HBCUs photos on www.gettyimages.com will be distributed to HBCUs and continue impacting the Grants Program.

“Our nation has such a rich history, and we are honored to help the HBCUs with our partners at Getty Images capture and preserve those precious snapshots in time,” said Tim Anderson, Group Product Manager at Epson. “Epson professional archival scanners include technology to capture slides and negatives and photos, restore faded images, as well as remove dust and reduce grain to deliver a more true‑to‑life depiction of these historical moments.”

To help promote the digitization of archival content of HBCUs around the country, Epson will provide up to fifty HBCUs outside of the grant program with a 50% discount on Epson’s professional grade scanners to support their own efforts.

The digitization process at Jackson State University commenced earlier this month, with planning for Claflin University, North Carolina Central University and Prairie View A&M University currently underway.

More about the HBCU Grant Program and this year’s grant recipients can be found at: https://grants.gettyimages.com/en/grants/hbcu‑grant