A personal digital archive 25 captures

The changing face of public health online.

One homepage, seen across a quarter century. From the hand-built web to an era when the front page had to speak to the whole country at once.

Enter the archive
CDC homepage in 2005
2005
CDC homepage in 2014
2014
CDC homepage in 1997
1997

Curated by Peter Benoit.

The archive viewer

Twenty-five years,
one window.

Choose a year, then scroll inside the browser frame. The captures keep their original proportions because the length of a page is part of its story.

1997

The handmade web

A homepage that feels like a directory: small, direct, and built around links.

Open archival original
Full CDC homepage capture from 1997

Four chapters

The web grows up in public.

  1. 01

    1997–2003

    The handmade web

    Links are the interface. The institution is present, but the medium is still introducing itself.

  2. 02

    2004–2009

    The public portal

    Navigation hardens into columns, utilities, channels, and a homepage designed as a map.

  3. 03

    2010–2018

    The campaign stage

    Photography arrives at scale. Health stories become visual, timely, and increasingly human.

  4. 04

    2019–2022

    The essential service

    The page stretches, simplifies, and learns to carry urgent information alongside everyday guidance.

Then / now

Same mission.
Different medium.

Drag across the image to move between the first and final captures in this collection.

CDC homepage in 1997
CDC homepage in 2022
1997 2022

The contact sheet

Every captured year.

Click any specimen to inspect the complete page above.

“Websites disappear. Memory shouldn’t have to.”

A small archive of public service, interface fashion, and the many ways one institution presented itself to the world.

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