Half a century of remarkable news events will illuminate a subway approach to the new-look National Museum of Photograph Film and Television.

Images from 20 stories from the Bradford museum's vast Daily Herald archive will be projected onto the city centre subway, which is a key approach route to the tourist attraction.

The unique piece of public art, called The Face In The Desert, is the work of German artist Joachim Schmid.

Museum spokesman Alison Jarman said: "The work focuses on extraordinary events which occur in ordinary lives.

"In doing so, Schmid provides a witty and thoughtful commentary on 20th century life and the ways in which anyone can experience their own 15 minutes of fame."

The Face In The Desert, which takes its name from a 1960 Daily Herald story about a soldier on patrol near the Suez Canal, is part of Public Sightings.

This ground-breaking programme of art works was initiated by Photo 98, the UK Year of Photography and the Electronic Image, and created in partnership with the museum and Bradford Council.

All the work has been selected from the People: Miscellaneous section of the Daily Herald archive - a collection of filing cabinet drawers, filled with a million news photographs covering more than 50 years of human interest stories.

The newspaper was founded in 1911 as a print unions strike sheet and went on to become the highest circulating daily newspaper in the world, before being relaunched as The Sun in 1968.

The images in The Face In The Desert range from pictures taken by professional photographers to photo booth portraits and family snaps, often enhanced to improve their reproduction, with other family members painted out.

A newspaper supplement is available from the museum telling the stories behind each image.

They range from society figures accused of theft, a hero who talked a man out of jumping to his death from an office block and the woman who narrowly escaped death when a plane crashed into her house.

The images will be projected from slides on to the subway walls by equipment built into special vandal-proof cabinets.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.