Samantha Cawson: Uniques and Multiples: The ICOM-CC Photographic Materials Working Group Interim Meeting, September 2016

Samantha Cawson at the Rijksmuseum during the ICOM-CC Photographic Materials Working Group Interim Meeting, 2016

Samantha Cawson is a recent conservation graduate from Camberwell College of Arts and currently works at The National Archives, UK. Samantha previously studied an undergraduate degree in photographic arts and now aims to fuse her two specialities by keeping up to date with photographic conservation research and debates. She was awarded a Clothworkers bursary to attend the ICOM-CC photographic materials meeting in Amsterdam.

This meeting brought conservators, scientists, and art historians from over 30 different countries to the splendour of the Rijksmuseum. The museums collection includes around a million works of art with 150,000 holdings of photographic material from the 19^th and 20^th centuries. It was the diversity of material and photographic technique within the collection that inspired this years PMWG meeting’s theme: Uniques and Multiples.

A selection of photographs on display from the Rijksmuseum’s photographic collection, 2016

This theme brought a real mixture of lectures, however, the talks that really caught my attention where by the conservators who where facing challenging ethical dilemmas. Nora Kennedy’s talk The future isn’t what it used to be: changing views of contemporary color photography discussed the problem of fading and discolouration of coloured photos in an age of digital reproduction, and the artists desire to reprint images. The thrill of photography has almost always been its multiplicative values, though, what happens when a photograph is reprinted and exhibited by the artist years later onto different paper, framed differently, cropped or even photoshopped to suit the artists current style? Additionally, if new prints are being made does this throw the uniqueness of the original editions into jeopardy? Clara von Waldthausen examined this topic further in her talk, Deception, and perception: reflections on faded chromogenic photographs in art collections. Waldthausen scrutinizes how the preservation strategy of destroying a 1^st generation print in order to house and exhibit a newly printed edition has implications on the art world, suggesting that when a contemporary print essentially replaces the ‘original’ it ultimately has the potential to distort how we as the viewer perceive these newer, less faded prints, thus raising the problematic questions “Is the fine art photograph a material object or, as photography is, a reproducible medium? Is it the photographic image that we should preserve rather than the material object?” As you can imagine this topic brought much debate!

Clara von Waldthausen presenting her lecture during the ICOM-CC Photographic Materials Working Group Interim Meeting, 2016

A different ethical problem was faced by Antonin Riou who gave a fascinating talk regarding The conservation Treatment and conservation framing of 11 photographic sculptures by Gilbert and George. Riou discussed the historic and aesthetic importance of the black metal frames that surrounds the DOP silver gelatine prints, and the conservation problems they caused; tears, delamination of the printed borders, degradation of the original wedging foam and its rubber based adhesive, and dust infiltration, which caused micro scratches on the artworks and on the inner side of the acrylic glazing. Riou described how he and his team worked to best possibly preserve the original integrity of the works by altering the glazing and back panels of the frames, and the creation of customised treatment methods in order to complete the project in just 20 days, and to retain the original look of the prints overall.

The conference was a wonderful opportunity to understand some of the issues that other conservators are facing in regards to photographic material and how they are working to overcome such challenges. I would like to express my gratitude to the clothworkers foundation for the CPD funding that I received, which made it possible for me to attend such an interesting and inspiring event.

Clara M Prieto: Conservation in the 21st Century: ICON2016, Birmingham ‘Turn and Face the Change’

Clara speaking at the Daguerreobase symposium, October 2015, by Carlos Vertanessian

Clara M. Prieto, Professor at Escuela Superior de Conservación y Restauración de Bienes Culturales de Madrid, ESCRBC, PhD student and independent conservator and researcher, writes about her experiences at the recent ICON Conference.

The Institute of Conservation’s (ICON) third triennial conference, Turn and Face the Change: Conservation in the 21st Century was held between the 15^th and 17^th June 2016 at Aston University in Birmingham. I had the lucky opportunity to attend thanks to a Student Bursary from the ICON Photographic Materials Group (PhMG). For more than two full-on days, I had the chance to meet professionals from across the world, who discussed the challenges facing the conservation field, as well as the emerging opportunities. These included the application of digital and new technologies to conservation, for the purposes of promoting conservation and for conservation documentation.

The ICON Book & Paper Group and ICON Photographic Materials Group joint sessions were held during the afternoon of day one and the morning of day two in the Great Hall, chaired by Zoe Kennington, Cordelia Rogerson, Fiona McLees and Sonja Schowll. As a result of their proficiency, the sessions were perfectly timed. I was scheduled the first speaker of the first session, chaired by Zoe Kennington. Thanks to her professionalism, I felt confident and supported as everything worked smoothly for my presentation.

Clara working in the ARCP laboratory

In my talk, SHS Structural Housing System. A proposal in archival housing for storing and protecting daguerreotypes I outlined the Structural Housing System (SHS) for daguerreotypes that I have designed and implemented. The SHS is a housing system that focuses on the special features and on the protection requirements of the daguerreotype, taking into account its structure, allowing it to be protected while being studied just as it was when it was created. The SHS protects the daguerreotype from mechanical and chemical damage. Often, the weakening of the hinge due to the handling of the daguerreotype causes it to break, leaving the case’s lid separated from the tray. The breaking of the case, the first line of defence for the daguerreotype may cause other damage such as the breaking of the glass or the seal thus leaving the plate exposed to deterioration caused by environmental factors and potentially causing the image to be irretrievably lost.The SHS is fully reversible and serves as an ideal alternative to interventive treatment. In terms of applicability of the system, it is simple to develop and apply, with affordable and easily-accessible materials. I expect to share the research outcomes soon!

Other speakers included Ian Moor and Emma Lowe, Silver gelatin prints blocked to glass: an investigation into the adhesion mechanism and their conservation treatment. Framed photographic prints can become adhered to glass under high relative humidity (RH) or in disasters like floods and firefighting interventions. Moor and Lowe’s presentation showed interesting data on adhesion rates between glass and photographic prints depending on the print surface (matt/ glossy) and glass surface. Moor and Lowe’s data showed there were higher adhesion rates between matt developed out silver gelatin prints and glass, overall there were higher adhesion rates to coated glass and no adhesion to UV coated glass. The research determined that after 80 days the gelatin-glass cohesion resulted in ferrotyping. After a total 150 days the bond between gelatin and glass became stronger and 75% of samples were damaged; the image was separated from the paper. The conclusions drawn are useful in decision making, since it gives valuable information about the response time in high RH and disaster situations as well as treatment options of silver gelatin prints

They were followed by Julia Wiland, conservator from the British Library, who spoke on New methods, Emerging techniques. She described the use of a new acrylic sheet, VIVAK® a brand name for polyethylene terephthalate glycol (PETG) for rehousing lantern slides and gelatin dry plates. It has a number of advantages, such as its complete reversibility; no adhesive is applied to the photograph, and the simplicity of the cut; it can be cut to size to infill all sorts of missing shapes from glass plates. As it is lighter than glass, the rehoused items can be stored vertically with the rest of the items in a collection, without adding the excess weight of the more traditional technique using glass. Julia also shared some disadvantages and problems encountered, such as the sensibility of the VIVAK® to scratches, giving the advice of keeping the protective layer on until the last minute! She calls for prudence with regard to the use of VIVAK®, as it is a fairly new material, not yet often used in conservation, and there is very little information about it, especially about its ageing properties, encouraging colleagues to share their experiences, especially those from larger institutions that may be able to carry out scientific tests and analysis.

The Conference was full of many notable talks; the programme included such a great number of interesting papers and events that it was hard to choose which to attend! The joint sessions of the ICON Book and Paper Group and the ICON Photographic Materials Group featured very interesting talks on large collections (O’Connor, Lévêque & Vergnoux) (Doughty), Polaroids (Vasallos), preservation of animation artwork (Weller, Peters and van Aubel) album interventions (Richards), conservation of bound herbaria (Vardi) use of new technologies (Pavelka and Khan) (Stanley) and how to preserve the materiality of objects (Forman, Huddleston, Deines and Lord). Other ICON groups held parallel sessions about interesting topics, for instance the Archaeology group talk on the use of new technologies for the recreation of the Staffordshire Hoard, an excellent work by Pieta Greaves ACR, Frank Cooper, Kayleigh Fuller and Lizzie Miller that I had the chance to view live in a visit organized by ICON. The Heritage Science Group had a fascinating talk about the vulnerabilities of documents to fingerprints by Terry Kent.

Clara performing a conservation treatment using a binocular microscope in the ARCP laboratory

As a photograph and graphic art conservator, I have a special interest in complex artifacts, such as cased photographs, albums, and scrapbooks that use different materials, since they are always a challenge and an abiding conundrum. That is why I found extremely enriching the opportunity to listen to the different approaches to conservation practice and the diverse experiences outlined by the diverse specialists in both disciplines. The conference also gave me the chance to meet inspiring people and to establish and strengthen bonds of collaboration with first-rate professionals.

Stephanie Jamieson: Attending ICON 16, The Institute of Conservation conference in Birmingham

 

Stephanie Jamieson at ICON 16

Stephanie Jamieson is a recent MA Conservation graduate from Camberwell College of Arts (Art on Paper pathway) with a particular interest in photographic materials. She was awarded an Icon Photographic Materials Group Student Bursary to support her attendance at Icon 16

The 2016 Institute of Conservation (ICON) conference, Turn and Face the Change: Conservation in the 21st Century, was a two day event full of thought-provoking, inspiring and innovative content. The conference venue was Aston University in Birmingham, providing multiple spaces in which parallel sessions could be run by the different ICON groups. The theme of the conference was contemporary conservation, encompassing new ideas, new materials and new challenges. The ICON Photographic Materials Group (PhMG) generously gave me a bursary to attend the conference.

The ICON Book and Paper Group and the ICON Photographic Materials Group held joint sessions at the conference, featuring talks on Polaroids, albums, daguerreotype storage, the use of Vivak and the challenges of digitising the letters of Joseph Cornell. The other parallel sessions held by ICON groups such as Heritage Science, Collection Care and Archaeology covered a wide variety of fascinating topics.

One notable talk from the joint Book and Paper Group and Photographic Materials Group sessions was Papers, Plastics and Process: The Conservation of Animation Artwork: an Interdisciplinary Approach from Aafke Weller, Mette Peters and Carien van Aubel. This addressed the conservation of the large archive collection of 20^th Century material at the EYE Filmmuseum in Amsterdam. Within Eye’s collection is a wide variety of materials including photographs, films and documents as well as animation artwork from the 70s, 80s and 90s. Animators during these periods experimented with subjects and materials and as a result, the preservation and conservation of the animation artwork has been a challenge for the museum in terms of stability of the objects and documentation of artist methods and processes. To fully understand this particular collection and appropriately address the conservation issues, a paper conservator, contemporary art conservator and animation researcher combined their expertise in surveying the collection, interviewing artists and researching materials. A large portion of the artwork was plastic foils/cells, believed to be made of unstable cellulose acetate. A concern with this type of material is vinegar syndrome, also known as acetate film base degradation, which is an inherent form of deterioration within the material, accelerated by a warm and humid environment. Vinegar syndrome will eventually cause embrittlement and shrinkage of the cellulose acetate base of the plastic foils rendering the images unreadable. To reduce this, the EYE Filmmuseum have now housed these collections in a cold store. By bringing together conservators and an animation historian the Eye museum now has a better understanding of this collection and how to predict its future care needs.

Another highly notable presentation was given by Ioannis Vasallos, Junior Conservator of Photographic Materials at Rijksmuseum on The Preservation of Black and White Polaroid Prints: Research Based on Three Albums from the Stanley Kubrick Archive. The project focused on the conservation of a continuity album of black and white Polaroid prints used during the filming of The Shining. The main issues were fading and discolouration of the prints and the acidic environment created by the self-adhesive album. Thorough research into the history and composition of Polaroids was necessary so that this complex material could be better understood and an appropriate conservation treatment selected. Treatment was carried out to remove the prints from the album and rehouse them in polyester sleeves, reducing any further deterioration from contact with acidic pages of the album.

Experimenting with a fish eye camera lens

This year’s ICON conference was full of many more informative talks and I came away with plenty of new ideas and a full notebook. Attending ICON 2016 has strengthened my desire to work with photographs. It has also encouraged me to develop my understanding of the composition and deterioration mechanisms of modern 21st century photographic materials. This is an area I began to look at during my MA.