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British Rock Art Collection (BRAC) - back Online


British Rock Art Collection (BRAC) - back Online

http://ukra.jalbum.net/brac

Quite a few people will hopefully remember BRAC - the online image gallery covering British rock art sites. It was originally setup in 2004 by the Dutch rock art enthusiast Jan Brouwer (alias Rockartuk on TMA) and his friend Gus Van Veen. Over several years Jan went on to expand the collection to well over 18000 images, covering 1200 sites.

Sadly, in 2011 Jan Brouwer became ill and passed away, a great loss to all his family and friends.
Around this time Fotopic (the internet company hosting the BRAC gallery) also closed down and so the rock art collection was lost too. The online nature of Fotopic meant that gallery owners had no real back up of their sites. Attempts to contact the company drew a blank until early 2013 when the old Fotopic servers were brought temporarily back online to allow customers to retrieve their images. At this point Jan’s friends took the opportunity to rescue the collection.
Unfortunately the old BRAC website no longer existed and only the images were available for download, so these images have now been compiled into a new website using Jalbum photo gallery software.

As with the original BRAC site, this new version consists of photographs from Jan Brouwer’s own collection and those of his many friends, who provided copies for inclusion in the BRAC. Other images were used with permission from the owners, but as Jan is no longer with us it is difficult to know what the arrangements were for every single image.
Many filenames include the name of the contributor so it has been possible to compile a ‘credits list’ on the new site to both acknowledge and thank those who contributed to the collection. As would be expected there are quite a few TMA members listed (some simply by their usernames) so we are hoping these people are still happy for their images to be part of the British Rock Art Collection.

At the present time BRAC is effectively an archive of all the images brought together by Jan Brouwer and it still forms a useful resource for anyone interested in British rock art. In the future new sites could be added to it, but it will be hard to match Jan’s dedication in this respect.

Please take a look at the new BRAC. It’s a kind of tribute to Jan’s interest and passion for these ancient rock carvings and also his wish to share this with everyone.
As BRAC was and still is a collaborative effort we hope it can continue to be the largest website dedicated to UK rock art on the net.
Posted by Chappers
2nd December 2013ce

Comments (5)

Now there's a nice bit of good news. Well done to all and welcome back. ryaner Posted by ryaner
2nd December 2013ce
Great News! Jan and Gus's work was a genuine inspiration in my life. Until I stumbled across the old BRAC site I didn't know the extent of RA in my own country. I am so glad BRAC has been reconstituted.
Keep on Rocking!
Howburn Digger Posted by Howburn Digger
2nd December 2013ce
Wonderful news! tjj Posted by tjj
2nd December 2013ce
Great to see this back up! mascot Posted by mascot
5th December 2013ce
Thank you for highlighting this wonderful "rebirth" which we all thought was lost forever.
Are there any contacts to speak to about the image locations? Some facility to provide captions would render the collection even better! I can identify some unlabelled sites and I know there will be others who could, if this was practicable.
Posted by tomatoman
11th December 2013ce
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