image courtesy CRDI/Ajuntament de Girona.

A joint presentation by David Iglésias Franch (Ajuntament de Girona, and Photoconsortium president) and Axelle Vanmaele (meemoo) will be delivered in the framework of EUreka3D-XR project at the prestigious 2and3D Photography – Practice & Prophecies conference at Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, 21 May 2026.

Title of the presentation is “Challenges in 3D digitization: experiences and resources” and starts with a story from the audiovisual archive of the Girona city council (CRDI). In 2022 a digitisation project inspired us to digitise in 3D a selection from our collection of daguerreotypes. 3D digitization with photogrammetry is a stable and widely used technique, however, due to the specific characteristics of the daguerreotypes, the process posed challenges in order to get the best visual results. Handling these challenges required experiments and technical solutions to be deployed, and required specific research and a series of iterations through a pre-testing process to obtain high quality 3D. The lessons learnt from this experience, along with reflections about the reuse possibilities of 3D digitized cultural heritage, led us to another project named EUreka3D-XR, currently ongoing. While the EC is pushing the cultural heritage sector towards an acceleration of the digitisation of heritage, with a specific focus on 3D, we acknowledge the need of cultural institutions and GLAMS in general in building digital skills, knowledge and capacity, and being inspired for reuse of these 3D assets in compelling XR storytelling and user engagement. EUreka3D-XR project is providing pilot scenarios, learning opportunities, capacity building, tools and resources to support the CH community in facing these challenges.

The presentation will bring a hands-on, direct experience from a photographic archive, about innovation 3D and XR projects that aim at fulfilling the institutional mission of sharing and reusing photographic and other heritage collections for the benefit of the community and other stakeholders. It will also offer a showcase of existing and upcoming learning opportunities and resources for the management and reuse of 3D collections, which are a focus nowadays for the entire cultural and creative sector, and showcases pilot experiences in XR with technologies that reuse 2D and 3D cultural resources for user engagement. The presentation also links to the opportunities and possibilities available in the common European data space for cultural heritage, currently the major EU initiative to support digital transformation of the sector.

Speakers:
David Iglésias Franch is Expert in the management of photographic and audiovisual heritage. Knowledge in digital image, archives, metadata quality, photography conservation and digital preservation. He is the Head of Department of Photography and Audiovisual Records at Girona City Council. He’s been the Chair of the Expert Group in Photographic and Audiovisual Archives of the International Council on Archives (ICA). He is Director and teacher of the Graduate Diploma in Management, Preservation and Dissemination of Photographic Archives at UAB Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. He is the current president of Photoconsortium Association for the the promotion and enhancement of the culture of photography and photographic heritage, and is committed in the areas of digital cultural heritage, access and reuse of cultural content, citizens’ engagement and education.

Axelle Vanmaele has a Master in Eastern-European Languages and Culture. She joined meemoo in 2021. Until the end of 2023 she worked at meemoo as the coordinator of a large-scale digitisation project for glass plate negatives and positives. As part of this project she was also responsible for the dissemination of the digitisation expertise gained with the execution of this project. In 2024 Axelle joined team Expertise of meemoo. She currently coordinates a collaborative project that aims at the creation of Visual Name Authority, an authority list of person names of people who are relevant for cultural heritage in Flanders that will be enriched with photographic portraits to be used as reference images in face recognition to enrich descriptive metadata.

EUreka3D-XR project is co-financed by the Digital Europe Programme of the European Union.