INFO 284: Photographic Preservation
Summer 2022
Course Description
“Preservation of Photographs” offers a broad introduction to the history, technology, identification, and care of photographic materials from 1839 to the present day. Photographic and photomechanical processes will be examined and discussed in detail. A sample set of 18 historic photographs and a handheld microscope give the student experience in identification of photographic processes.
Topics on the care and preservation of photographs include understanding photographic deterioration, selection of appropriate enclosures, environmental monitoring, the effects of temperature and relative humidity on collections, the importance of cold storage for certain photographic materials, and digitization issues for photographic images within a preservation environment.
Learning outcomes
Identify and explain preservation concerns for many common types of photographic (print and negative) processes.
Apply archival rules of appraisal, arrangement, and description to complex visual archives.
Identify the complex issues relating to photograph digitization and born digital images, including management, access, metadata, and long-term preservation.
Implement cold storage solutions for photographic materials.
Portfolio
Like the Managing Photographic Collections course, photographic preservation is not generally about digital curation. Yet again, the course material provides context for developing a digitization program for film and print collections. The readings, exercises, and projects have significantly helped my work as a digital archivist in photographic collections.
Through this class, I learned to accurately identify photographic processes, develop a preservation program, and identify deterioration risks. I also became familiar with identification tools, preservation best practices, and digitization standards
Scavenger Hunts
Offest Lithography | Rotogravure | Wet Plate Collodion
Collectively, the scavenger hunt assignments gave me the best understanding of common photographic processes, including identification clues, preservation problems, and the tools for identifying the processes.
Research Paper: Glass Plate Negatives
My research on preservation strategies revealed that preservation on a budget is possible with a little creativity and the right packaging material. The hands-on aspect of this project explored the complexities and pitfalls of process identification. Through that process and accompanying research, I became familiar with the problems glass plate negatives present in an archive with a limited budget.
Professional Application
As mentioned under the section Managing Photographic Collections, since taking this course, I have become the image media specialist in the archive where I work. From week one of this course, I began helping with identifying negative processes, preservation hazards, and digitization challenges. Learning the processes also enabled me to determine that one of our most important negative collections is a duplicate, spurring a conversation and search for the originals.
By knowing the physical structure of a negative and how it deteriorates, I can anticipate how that affects a digitization project. This knowledge has helped in three ways. I now prefer using a DT Versa camera-based system over an Epson scanner because of its ability to create preservation-grade surrogates of warped negatives quickly. Two, I can identify the causes of color shift in a negative and approximate what the original might look like in post-editing. Three, I can better explain to a researcher why a digital surrogate may look different from what they expect based on the deterioration of the original color negative.
Finally, I have recommended and implemented updated preservation grade standards based on FADGI 2022.