Photograph Conservation Workshop

for Book and Paper Conservators

October 21-24, 2013
Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens
San Marino, CA

Instructors: Gawain Weaver and Jennifer Olsen  

Course Description

Libraries and archives collect more than books and manuscripts. Textiles, digital files and audio-visual materials are common in collections. Photographs are probably the most-represented media after paper-based objects, but their value is usually to the collection as a whole not as individual artist’s prints. Conservators working in libraries and archives are charged with their care, but often feel they don’t have the knowledge and skills to address basic conservation issues at the collection level. In this class, conservators will learn about the history and composition of photographs, housing and exhibit strategies, and basic cleaning, stabilization, and repair techniques for 19th and 20th century photographic prints.

Basic process identification will not be covered in depth. Though it is not a prerequisite, a Care and Identification of Photographs workshop will be taught the week prior at the same venue and provides a solid foundation for this more advanced course.

Format

4-day workshop, mix of lecture and hands-on instruction, 4-day schedule available on request

Who Should Attend

This class is taught at an intermediate to advanced level. Participants should have experience in book or paper conservation in evaluating condition, making treatment decisions, and performing intermediate to advanced level conservation treatments.

What’s Included

4-days of instruction, color workshop notebook, a variety of damaged photographic materials for workshop treatment and take home, 60x handheld microscope. Participants should bring their own tools though some will be provided.

How To Apply

Application deadline July 1st, responses sent by July 15th.
Send CV and a brief letter explaining your reasons for attending the workshop to workshops@gawainweaver.com. Mid-career experience level in book or paper conservation strongly preferred. Applications accepted and reviewed on a rolling basis after the deadline if there is still space in the workshop. Workshop registration and materials fee of US$1500.00 payable upon acceptance.

Hands-On Workshop: Accurate Elemental Nondestructive XRF

November 5-6, 2012

Gawain Weaver Art Conservation
18 Greenfield Ave
San Anselmo, CA 94960
Cost: FREE

There is limited space in this workshop.
Please contact Gawain Weaver to apply for workshop:
xrf@gawainweaver.com. Workshop includes:

• Information about the physics of XRF (X-ray fluorescence)
• Demonstrations showing how to apply this technique to elemental analysis of virtually anything
• Analysis of YOUR samples
• XRF instruments for hands-on learning

Workshop Instructor: Dr. Bruce Kaiser, Chief Scientist, Bruker Elemental, Handheld XRF

Bruce is an internationally-known expert and has taught in over 300 museums and universities worldwide. He has broad and deep technical knowledge of the challenges facing scientists, curators and conservators of very diverse collections and materials.

Please visit our new XRF page for more information.

Please join us in celebrating the opening of our new studio Saturday, February 11, 2012, 6–9pm @ 18 Greenfield Avenue, San Anselmo, CA

Welcoming conservator Jennifer Olsen who joined our studio in 2011!

Featuring a magic lantern Autochrome show, a photo booth, highlights from the studio’s photographic study collection, and examples of conservation treatments.

Magic Lantern Autochrome Show: See the world’s first color images that amazed viewers upon their introduction in 1907. These color images are rarely projected due to their great fragility.

Refreshments will be served. No RSVP necessary.

This image by German portrait photographer August Sander was featured in our ad in the Sept/Oct 2011 issue of Photograph magazine. The surface of the print was cleaned, tapes and adhesives were removed, and the missing upper left corner was filled and toned so that it does not detract from the viewing of the image overall. The metallic sheen on the surface of the print is called silver-mirroring, and occurs in the dark areas of silver prints. It is the result of the silver image particles breaking down. Some of the image silver travels to the surface and forms a visible mirror-like coating of silver oxides and silver sulfides on the print surface. The visibility of the silver-mirroring on this print is enhanced in the before treatment photograph by the angle of the lighting. Prior to treatment the silver-mirroring was blotchy and uneven. It distracted from the viewing of the image and obscured shadow detail. Surface cleaning was done so as to slightly reduce the silver mirroring and make it more even, less distracting, and to enhance detail in the shadows. While it is acknowledged that silver-mirroring is a form of silver image deterioration and was not the artist’s intent, it also functions as a sign of authenticity in older gelatin silver prints. In the treatment of fine art photographs therefore, the reduction of silver-mirroring is never approached lightly, but it is occasionally done in order to minimize any disfiguring effect upon the image. Silver-mirroring is never removed completely, except in the case of certain family photographs. To learn more about the deterioration of gelatin silver prints, see Gawain Weaver’s Guide to fiber-base gelatin silver print condition and deterioration.

We recently completed conservation treatment of a remarkable panorama of San Francisco from the collection of The Society of California Pioneers. Taken by Eadweard Muybridge from Mark Hopkins’ mansion at the top of Nob Hill (now the site of the InterContinental Mark Hopkins Hotel), this 360-degree panorama shows the extraordinary growth of this city in the 30 years since the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill in January of 1848. At that time, San Francisco was a small town of only 1000 people and by 1878 the city boasted a population of over 200,000.

The panorama consists of 13 albumen prints, each mounted to a sheet of paper, and then attached to a continuous sheet of fabric to form a nearly 18’ long panorama. Each image is about 20 5/8” high.

Each of the 13 images was captured on a mammoth wet collodion negative over a period of perhaps 4 or 5 hours (about 20 minutes for each negative). The angle of the sun and the shadows in the images change noticeably from the first picture to the last. Each mammoth plate negative was then contact printed onto albumen paper, rendering an extraordinary degree of detail in the final print.

Two of the highlights of the panorama for us were the infamous Crocker Spite Fence (above) and the Aldine photography studio (below)—the only photographic studio we found during the six weeks the panorama was in our studio.

Conservation treatment began with surface cleaning the albumen prints, their mounts, and the backing fabric. The adhesive keeping the parts of the panorama together was beginning to fail in many areas, so we reattached the prints and the mount with wheat starch paste. Certain areas were cockled or folded and we locally humidified and flattened as necessary. Many fly specks and other surface accretions that had accumulated over the past 130 years were removed mechanically with the aid of a microscope. The treatment was intentionally very minimal. We wanted only to preserve the object in its present condition, leaving the clear signs of age, but making sure that the panorama can be carefully unfolded for study or exhibition without causing further damage to the prints or their backings.

There are 9 known copies of this panorama, and one will be on exhibit at SFMoMA from February 26 - June 7, 2011 as part of the exhibit Helios: Eadweard Muybridge in a Time of Change. 

The annual SF Camerawork benefit auction took place on November 13th this year, with an ad for Gawain Weaver conservation services on the back cover. In addition to classic images and work by well-established photographers, there were many Bay Area photographers represented, such as Ben Nixon (Shasta National Forest, gelatin silver print from wet collodion negative) and Chris McCaw (gelatin silver print from his sunburned series). I have enjoyed this photo auction the last few years since returning to California, and we were happy to contribute in a small way by placing an ad on the back cover of the auction catalog.

Thanks also to the Yosemite Museum, National Park Service for permission to reproduce the before and after treatment images of their Carleton Watkins albumen print “Vernal Falls, 300 ft, Yosemite, 1861.”

Iowa State University's Parks Library was the latest venue for my Care and ID of Photographs workshop from May 16-19, 2010. Hilary Seo, Head of Preservation at Iowa State University, invited me to teach there last month. The workshop was well attended by conservators, archivists, collectors, and preservation professionals. The weather was beautiful, and everything was green. The Ames campus is more like a park, abundant with grass and trees. It was also my first workshop in which participants received their own 60x handheld microscopes (LED lights and all!). The workshop improves just a little bit every time, based on my experiences teaching and participant feedback. Dennis Wendell from the Ames Historical Society attended the workshop, and brought some wonderful photographs for all of us to see. He wrote to me a few days after the workshop:

I knew there was more than just identifying CDVs, cabinet cards, Ambrotypes and tintypes. Your four-day workshop was absolutely terrific! I was finally able to understand the various photo processes due to your impressive depth of knowledge, effective ability to convey complex information, hands-on access to a large collection of examples and the incredible images incorporated into your PowerPoint. This was the very first time I've seen photos under a microscope, and was blown away, particularly by the projection computer microscope. It's very easy to become addicted to the fascinating history of photography. The identification sessions were extremely valuable in that they made us think about all the options, document what we saw and explain our conclusion. As in life itself, one particular specimen may not fit the pattern. I commend you for patiently explaining the extremely complex details of color photography.

It was a wonderful group of students in Ames, and I had a pleasure teaching (and learning) there. Every time I look at photographs, I learn something new, and I love this process of looking, discovering, teaching. It makes every workshop completely new.
 

Gawain gave a talk on April 1st at Gallery 291 in San Francisco (291 Geary St). Gallerist Ed Carey graciously hosted the event. There were a lot of questions particularly about inkjet stability. Even in the 1 ½ hour talk though, there was little time to cover the topic in any detail, so a series of gallery talks on photograph conservation and preservation is being planned. We’ll post details here when they know them. Also, Ed Carey will announce it via his mailing list. Gallery 291 often shows work printed in various "alternative" photographic processes, such as platinum or gum. He had a show of Jim Marshall's platinum prints in 2009, and has a show of cyanotype/gum combination prints by Brian Taylor coming up in May/June.
 

The 2010 Care and ID of Photographs workshops are off to a good start with workshops at UCLA and the Center for Creative Photography. Improvements are underway based upon these first workshops. The workshop notebooks will be printed in color from now on, and a small 60x handheld microscope will be given to every participant to keep. The expense of color printing will raise the workshop price slightly, but surveyed participants were unanimous in their approval of this change. We think you'll find it worth every penny.

Thank you for a jam packed & fascinating, not to mention useful, workshop!

--Mary Anne Redding, Curator of Photography, New Mexico History Museum

Can't thank you enough, Gawain! Your knowledge, and the presentation of it, far exceeded expectations.

--Jean Marie Smart, Visual Resources Curator, University of Arizona

Color Print Research Now Available Online….”Chromogenic Characterization: A Study of Kodak Color Prints, 1942-2008” is now available on the NOTES ON PHOTOGRAPHS website developed at George Eastman House.

To access the site visit www.notesonphotographs.org

This research, conducted by Zach Long and myself, is an in-depth study of the characteristics of Kodacolor and Ektacolor prints from their introduction in 1942 until the present, and can be useful for the dating of color prints, and for anyone looking to understand more about the physical characteristics of this ubiquitous 20th century photographic process. The article includes high-resolution color images of print cross-sections and dye clouds. From the article page there is a link to a discussion page where comments and exchange of ideas are highly encouraged. Although you can view the article without being a registered user, I highly recommend that you sign up (for free) as a user, and become an active participant in the NOTES ON PHOTOGRAPHS online resource.