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Photography: Processes, Preservation, and Conservation
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Seated Male Nude (before treatment), 1880s. Thomas Eakins (American, 1844–1916). Platinum print. David Hunter McAlpin Fund, 1943 (43.87.20).
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More about This Exhibition
The technical history of photographic processes and related conservation, preservation, and connoisseurship issues were presented in an exhibition on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from January 30, 2001 through May 6, 2001. "Photography: Processes, Preservation, and Conservation" included thirty-five works by some of the most revered names in photography, ranging from the superbly preserved to the unfortunately time-worn, with before-and-after treatment documentation, microscopic views, and examples of current methods for examination, analysis, preservation, and treatment. The exhibition celebrated the January 2001 opening of the Museum's new, state-of-the-art Sherman Fairchild Center for Works on Paper and Photograph Conservation.
Philippe de Montebello, director of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, explained, "From its inception, photography has always had a somewhat split personality—part art, part science. While the Museum aims to collect and exhibit the high points of photographic art, we can better appreciate the aesthetics of those works, and our conservators can better safeguard them for future generations if we also understand the technical history of the medium. By revealing this often hidden side of photography, we hope to allow our public to gain a fuller appreciation for the photographs displayed on our walls."
The exhibition and accompanying brochure was made possible by the Henry Nias Foundation, Inc.
More about the Objects on View
More about Processes
More about Preservation
More about Conservation
More about Technical Methods
Educational Programs
Exhibition Publication and Further Reading
Exhibition Organizers and Credits
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More about the Objects on View
"Photography: Processes, Preservation, and Conservation" was arranged chronologically, beginning with the first publicly displayed photographic process—the daguerreotype—and concluding with a variety of processes employed in color photography. Works by William Henry Fox Talbot, Carleton Watkins, Thomas Eakins, Edward Steichen, Eugène Atget, and Berenice Abbott, among others, were on view.
"Only in the past three decades has photograph conservation arrived at current levels of expertise and ethical standards as an outgrowth of photographic science and other areas of conservation specialization," said Nora Kennedy, Sherman Fairchild Conservator of Photographs at the Museum. "The roots of photographic conservation, however, can be found in the experiments of the early photographers themselves, as they tried to enhance and revivify their works."
The extraordinary precision of daguerreotypes—one-of-a-kind images on silver-plated copper sheets—was demonstrated in a view of Paris made in 1849 by Choiselat and Ratel, in which even the buttons on the uniform of a distant soldier are visible through a microscope. Preservation of daguerreotypes in period and modern housings were shown, and the risks of chemical cleaning were pointed out on a Southworth and Hawes portrait that a well-intentioned owner tried to clean in 1934.
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More about Processes
A two-part panorama of the first photographic printing firm, Reading Establishment (Talbot and Henneman, 1846), detailed the steps involved in the paper print process, which was invented by Talbot and which gradually supplanted daguerreotypes in the 1850s. In its early days, photography was handcrafted, and each photographer's work had a particular texture, tone, and color, the result of individual chemical recipes and procedures.
Five splendid salted paper prints from the 1840s and 1850s by Louis Robert, David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, Gustave Le Gray, Frank Chauvassaigne, and Louis-Désiré Blanquart-Evrard that were featured in the exhibition demonstrate this process.
View a glossary of principal photographic processes.
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More about Preservation
Two 1860s albumen silver prints by Carleton Watkins that were on display in the exhibition reveal how conditions of storage and display affect photographs. One print, richly printed and toned, never mounted, and apparently stored in ideal conditions, is clear, intense, and luminous; the other print, which was framed and long exhibited before joining the Metropolitan's collection, is discolored and stained from light and the poor materials of its mount and wood frame.
Learn about basic guidelines for the preservation of photographs.
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More about Conservation
Highlighting the critical role of the conservator, a platinum print of a male nude by Thomas Eakins, ca. 1890, was displayed alongside a full-scale photograph of the print prior to treatment. An explanation of how the conservator restored the photograph to structural stability and aesthetic integrity described aspects of deterioration and conservation. The state-of-the-art analytical tools of the conservator were explored through a turn-of-the-century photograph by Edward Steichen, an artist who experimented with a variety of painterly photographic techniques that rendered the works difficult to analyze. The precise elemental makeup of such pictures can now be discovered through non-destructive x-ray fluorescence, which enables the conservator to track an artist's technical development and to make more appropriate recommendations for treatment, storage, and exhibition.
Learn about photograph conservation at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
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More about Technical Methods
Technical methods to help determine authenticity, a major concern of collectors, curators, and other connoisseurs, were also displayed. Analysis of microscopic fibers from photographic paper can help to date a work, as can the presence of optical brighteners that were added to many photographic papers after World War II and are visible under ultra-violet light. The issue of "vintage prints" (prints made close to the time of the original negative) was presented through two dramatically different black-and-white prints of Berenice Abbott's 1925 portrait of writer Djuna Barnes, one made in the 1920s, the other in the 1980s.
Artificially aged samples of five-color processes—four-color pigment, chromogenic (the most common), silver dye bleach, dye diffusion transfer (Polaroid), and ink jet—illustrated the degree to which each of these processes is susceptible to deterioration, underscoring the fact that museums must take special steps to preserve even the most contemporary photographs.
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Educational Programs
A variety of educational programs were presented in conjunction with "Photography: Processes, Preservation, and Conservation."
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Exhibition Publication and Further Reading
A free brochure served as an illustrated guide to the exhibition, detailing photographic processes and conservation, and providing guidelines for preservation and resources.
View a list of further reading.
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Exhibition Organizers and Credits
The exhibition was organized by Malcolm Daniel, associate curator in the Department of Photographs, and Nora Kennedy. Nancy Reinhold, associate conservator of Photographs, and graduate interns in Photograph Conservation Lisa Barro, Erin Murphy, and Adrienne Lundgren assisted in the preparation of the exhibition.
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