9-19-2006
Early in the morning all of the fellows and faculty gathered outside of the Atelier de Restauration et de Conservation des Photographies de la Ville de Paris for the first tour of our day. Inside, Anne Cartier-Bresson and former Advanced Residency Program Fellow, Claire Tragni-Buzit led the tour of the lab. They had a lot of interesting projects to show which prompted plenty of discussions on how to house large oversized chromogenic prints, what type of binding tape to use on photographs on glass supports, and how to house unmounted albumen prints, to name a few. We also helped to identify a few unusual prints as well some rare chrystalotypes, which are albumen prints face mounted onto curved pieces of glass with painted glass surfaces beneath them.
Following a large group lunch we were taken into the photograph storage facility that houses the black and white images as well as the color materials in a special cool storage area. There the exhibitions manager and art handler showed us various contemporary photographs, as the collection contains materials from only the 1950s and beyond, as they put it, from Robert Frank’s The Americans to the present day.
Afterwards, the fellows in the current cycle all gave 15-minute presentations to the French conservation community, mostly on the subject of their current research projects but other research of interest as well. The talks included topics such as the monitoring of daguerreotypes on exhibition, glass deterioration, additive screen plates, a photographic wikipedia project, the treatment of photographic albums, historic photographic retouching, light bleaching and the use of new analytical techniques for use in field of photographic conservation. There was a river boat reception afterwards on the Seine overlooking Notre Dame Cathedral where the American and French conservators had an opportunity to converse over drinks with one another, getting better aquainted and exchanging our thoughts and philosophies about the field of photograph conservation.
Early in the morning all of the fellows and faculty gathered outside of the Atelier de Restauration et de Conservation des Photographies de la Ville de Paris for the first tour of our day. Inside, Anne Cartier-Bresson and former Advanced Residency Program Fellow, Claire Tragni-Buzit led the tour of the lab. They had a lot of interesting projects to show which prompted plenty of discussions on how to house large oversized chromogenic prints, what type of binding tape to use on photographs on glass supports, and how to house unmounted albumen prints, to name a few. We also helped to identify a few unusual prints as well some rare chrystalotypes, which are albumen prints face mounted onto curved pieces of glass with painted glass surfaces beneath them.
Following a large group lunch we were taken into the photograph storage facility that houses the black and white images as well as the color materials in a special cool storage area. There the exhibitions manager and art handler showed us various contemporary photographs, as the collection contains materials from only the 1950s and beyond, as they put it, from Robert Frank’s The Americans to the present day.
Afterwards, the fellows in the current cycle all gave 15-minute presentations to the French conservation community, mostly on the subject of their current research projects but other research of interest as well. The talks included topics such as the monitoring of daguerreotypes on exhibition, glass deterioration, additive screen plates, a photographic wikipedia project, the treatment of photographic albums, historic photographic retouching, light bleaching and the use of new analytical techniques for use in field of photographic conservation. There was a river boat reception afterwards on the Seine overlooking Notre Dame Cathedral where the American and French conservators had an opportunity to converse over drinks with one another, getting better aquainted and exchanging our thoughts and philosophies about the field of photograph conservation.
