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.”
Miller had no connection to Oz but felt suddenly responsible, the last man standing between a country's cultural history and potential oblivion. He also saw a business opportunity. So in August, he bought the collection (the price was undisclosed but in the millions) and began plotting how to get most of it back to Australia—selling to cultural organizations, nonprofits, museums, and libraries at a subsidized rate, and to collectors at full price, so he could fund the subsidies. So far, 50,000 photos have made it back home, and in September, he launched an exhibition called "The Australians" at his Santa Monica gallery, which he plans to tour around the U.S. Will he make a profit on this? He hopes so, but he knows only one thing for sure: "It was the right thing to do," he says.