About me
Bettina Fabos is co-founder and Director of the Fortepan US [fortepan.us] cooperative photo history portal and its first prototype, Fortepan IA, a public photo archive of everyday Iowa life. She is also creative director of the award-winning interactive timeline project, Proud and Torn: A Memoir of Hungarian History, [proudandtorn.org], an extensive photo history of Hungary based on amateur family snapshots. Now a Professor Emeritus of Interactive Digital Studies at the University of Northern Iowa, she is now able to remain at UNI in some capacity while spending most of her time working on developing Fortepan US nationally and internationally. To this end, Dr. Fabos is co-founder of OPAN, the Open Portal Archive Network, (opanglobal.org) which is connecting photo history portals across the world. Both a scholar and producer of digital culture, Fabos' written and creative work revolve around digital culture, digital photo archiving, digital visualization, and the Creative Commons. With a background in journalism, media production and media literacy pedagogy, Fabos has written extensively about the role of the U.S. media in democracy and Internet commercialization, and continues to interpret photographic history through video, interactive web stories, and public art. As Director of Fortepan Iowa, she sees the value of archive activism and in making historical photographs as publicly accessible as possible, so others can use them, interpret them, and tell stories.