Fortepan is a privately run photography archive that has become a key institution of Hungary’s visual memory. As a long-time contributor, I played a central role in identifying and recovering the long-lost Főfotó negative archive—one of the largest photographic collections of socialist-era Hungary. Through research, provenance clarification, and collaboration with Fortepan and public archives, approximately 400,000 negatives were reintegrated into the public domain, demonstrating how dispersed photographic heritage can be reconstructed and reconnected to institutional memory.