All forms of photography are subject to natural degradation. Acute damage can also occur for various reasons. In most cases, damaged and degraded analog photographic material can contain a lot of information. Even fragmented information, such as a water-damaged photograph or a broken negative, can still carry important information that can be significant in historical and cultural contexts.
Themes
Preus Museum organizes this two-day workshop to contribute to a better understanding of basic conservation tasks. This includes simple cleaning of photographic materials and the initial steps to save photographic heritage, for example, in the case of water damage. The target audience is individuals who work with photography but do not have a background in conservation, such as archivists, museum professionals, photographers, and photo historians. The topics we will cover include types of damage, causes of damage, and possible countermeasures most relevant to photographic collections. Additionally, we will discuss potential hazards for staff, collections, or equipment, as well as workplace organization.
Objectives of the workshop
The goal of the workshop is for participants to gain firsthand experience through lectures and practice. They will see and experience what photographic material with different types of damage looks like. Additionally, they will gain knowledge about what can be done, or not done, when faced with challenges of damaged photographic material as a responsible staff member or collections manager. This knowledge should help participants, when a damage occurs or is detected, to make assessments of what they can do to save the material themselves—and when they should seek assistance from a photo conservator.
The course is time-consuming and labor-intensive, therefore the number of participants is limited to 12. No prior knowledge is required to participate in the course other than an interest in photo history, photographic techniques, and materials. The course has two main segments with theoretical lectures and practical work with examples of damaged photographic material.
The workshop will preferably take place in Preus Museum's conservation department and other museum premises. With the workshop, a folder with useful information relevant to the course content is provided. It is planned to hold similar workshops once a year.
Speakers
The speakers at the seminar are Nadine Reding and Jens Gold. The workshop is organized in conjunction with the tenth anniversary of the launch of the guidance on handling damaged photographic material from the Norwegian Cultural Council and Preus Museum in 2014.
Nadine Reding is a photo conservator with education from Berner Fachhochschule – Restoration and Conservation of Graphics, Documents, and Photography. She is the owner and manager of Atelier Reding, which offers a wide range of work related to the conservation and digitization of photography in Switzerland. She also works as a photo conservator at the Musée Cantonal pour la Photographie – Photo Elysée in Lausanne, Switzerland. She has extensive and long-standing experience in handling damaged photographic material from various types of collections.
Jens Gold is a photo conservator and has worked at Preus Museum since 2002. He is responsible for the museum's internal and external work on photo conservation, including dissemination and research on the conservation of photographic materials through workshops, seminars, lectures, and publications. He holds an MA in Photo Conservation from the University of Applied Science – Berlin and the University of Oslo (UiO). He had a fellowship at the Mellon Advanced Residency Program in Photograph Conservation at the George Eastman House and Image Permanence Institute in Rochester, New York, from 1999 to 2001. Currently, he is working on a Ph.D. research project at UiO.
The lectures will be held in English.
