Entrepreneur Magazine
November 1, 2017
It was supposed to be a simple transaction. Fairfax Media, one of Australia’s largest media companies, wanted to digitize two million photos in its newspaper archives. So it struck a deal with an Arkansas company that would scan the images and could then sell off the originals. In 2013, Fairfax shipped over the photos. A few months later, the FBI raided the Arkansas company and charged it with an unrelated fraud. (Its owner pleaded guilty this March.) Years passed. A bank took control of the photos and would likely sell them off indiscriminately.
When Los Angeles–based photo dealer Daniel Miller heard about the situation this year, he asked to take a look. “To see a collection that was a pictorial survey of the history of a country was amazing,” he says. “My idea was that these should be sent back, but I couldn’t find any entity that could deal with something this big.”