PictureBank

PictureBank is a program that integrates with FileMaker to create digital image catalogues: easy to use, it lets you consult any content in an instant, organise it and prepare tailored selections.

Images can be viewed full screen for close examination, and every selection is saved in a history, making research, comparison and archiving faster.

A tool designed for those who want to manage and showcase their visual archive with care.

In the 1990s Ninive's PictureBank was one of the first Italian attempts to create an iconographic database devoted to works of art: innovative for its time, but bound by the technological limits of the period, with closed architectures, little interoperability and basic search.

The new 2026 version, developed in FileMaker, takes up that spirit and brings it into the present: an archive management system for works, exhibitions and images that does not merely store files, but helps prepare lists for sales proposals, research and exhibition projects.

Thumbnail grids, detailed records, high-resolution previews, automatically suggested lists and a structure that links every element to the artist's whole archive: no longer just an archive, but a curatorial tool that accompanies the artist, heirs and scholars over time.

The new platform does not erase the legacy of the old PictureBank: its cataloguing logic remains at the heart of the system.

Today, though, that logic expands, becomes more refined and turns into a professional tool, able to support an artist archive in the long term, with the technical solidity and flexibility the 1990s could not offer.

Do you have a photographic archive or an old image catalogue to renew? Write to us at info@officinebit.ch and we will show you how PictureBank can work with your material.

Further reading: Digital archives · The artist archive