About the Hershenson-Allen Image Archive

The Hershenson/Allen Archive is a collection of over 41,000 movie poster images available for lease. Other sources offer some of the same images (many "borrowed" from Bruce Hershenson books), but none offer them scanned at high resolution from high quality 4" by 5" color transparencies, every one of which is photographed directly from the original poster. When you have a product that deserves the very finest possible reproduction, see what the Hershenson-Allen Archive can do for you. If you are a writer, publisher, or video producer, our archive is a wonderful resource which can greatly improve your product with eye catching images. The archive does not sell reproductions to individuals. These images are solely provided to publishers of books and magazines, and manufacturers of videos and discs.

We have furnished hundreds of images for magazines such as Entertainment Weekly, newspapers such as The New York Times, books such as Time-Life Books, and even the U.S. Post Office. Whatever your need for full-color movie poster art, we can almost certainly help you.

About the history of this collection

The Hershenson-Allen Archive was formed in 1997 when Richard Allen and Bruce Hershenson merged their collections of movie poster images. Both collections consist of high quality 4" x 5" color transparencies, every one photographed directly from the original poster and every one of them scanned at extremely high resolution (and available in a variety of digital formats). Both collections were extensive and they complement each other. The combined archive contains over 41,000 transparencies (with an additional 25,000 duplicate images), covering a high percentage of all films known to exist.

Allen has been a movie enthusiast since his youth and began collecting movie posters as a teenager in the 1930s. At a Judith Crist Film week-end around 1970 he learned that half of all films made before 1950 were lost. Allen wondered if this was also true for the movie posters that promoted them. This was the start of a life long passion to find old posters and restore them so they can be enjoyed by generations to come. In 1988 Allen co-authored with Stephen Rebello REEL ART, GREAT POSTERS FROM THE SILVER SCREEN, which was published by Abbeville Press. REEL ART is now in its third printing and continues to be the definitive book on the subject of vintage movie posters. Several exhibitions of Allen's posters have been held at various venues, most notably one in mid-town New York under the auspices of The American Museum of the Moving Image.
Allen collected thousands of rare posters until he could no longer buy and restore more posters without selling the ones he already owned. At that point, Allen changed the focus of his efforts and began to professionally photograph his collection with high quality images so the international travel, extensive time and massive effort in accumulating the collection would not be lost. Now the images can be retained in one location, even though the posters themselves travel to all corners of the world. This activity continues to this day.

Likewise, Hershenson, who has been a poster dealer and collector for decades (having sold and auctioned over $50 million of vintage movie posters since 1990 alone), found himself buying, selling and trading movie posters from all years and genres, including many with obscure, but striking graphics as well as posters for historically major films with top stars. Like Allen, he recognized the value of preserving the images of these artifacts so they could be studied and enjoyed by future generations. Hershenson proceeded to create his archive, going to great lengths to have as many posters photographed as possible. Just as Allen was doing separately, Hershenson would regularly have the poster professionally restored prior to photography, to assure the absolute highest quality image.

 In 1997, Hershenson and Allen realized they were duplicating each other's efforts and joined forces. They combined their holdings into a single archive and since that date have added over 10,000 newly acquired images to the combined archive. They envision this enlarged record as a vehicle by which our motion picture heritage can forever be studied by scholars, professionals, connoisseurs, and myriad other experts in film and media, art and graphic design, communications, popular culture, social history, political science, etc.

Allen learned from Professor Hatch, his 7th grade history teacher, that "history is perhaps our best window to the future." We anticipate that the Hershenson-Allen Archive will contribute to that end.

To illustrate the vastness of the collection and the sophistication of storage, here are some images of the collection (click each one to see a larger image):