This morning, we began our day of tours at the Musee Carnavalet where curatorFrançoise Reynaud gave us all a tour of the library/collection facilities. There we had the opportunity to view some really magnificent daguerreotypes in their collection, including a remarkable panoramic view of Paris, a self-portrait by a daguerreotypist, and an array of other very early and significant objects related to the history of the city of Paris.
Due to a time conflict, Gawain and Rachel were had to leave the Musee Carnavalet a bit early to make their next appointment at the Musee Albert Kahn. This museum consists of several freestanding buildings that are surrounded by a serene Japanese garden. We were met by photograph conservator Cécile Miller who took us on a tour of their facilities. Albert Kahn made his fortune quite literally in gold, and with his money he commissioned photographers to document the landscapes of the world beginning in the last years of the 19th century. At first, the images were taken in stereo on gelatin glass plates but with the introduction of the autochrome in 1907 Albert Kahn set out to document the world in glorious color with this new process. The museum’s collection holds about 72,000 autochromes taken around the world, from Kahn’s home country of France to most of the countries in Asia, Africa and Europe (with the small exception that Kahn never sent photographers to the United States or Russia).
After WW1, the development all of the autochromes, which were diligently logged into several ledgers, became too expensive and time consuming to complete. Therefore, only the best images received full development and the others received partial development, so that they still look like a negative. About half of the collection remains in this state.
Following this tour, we headed north to the Institut National du Patrimoine, which is one of the four conservation graduate programs in Paris. There we were shown the photograph conservation lab by Aurélie Perreux and a few of the other students specializing in photography. One of the students gave us a presentation on her thesis concerning the treatment of the world’s largest ambrotype, which was about 2 feet by 3 feet!!! It was from the collection of the Musee des art et metiers. She described the reasons for deterioration on this photograph and how the problems were documented using analytical techniques like SEM-EDS. Following our tour of the lab, we were shown through the conservation library, which is the largest conservation library in France and certainly the largest one I’ve ever seen.
