Looking Back at the workshop Photographs and Their Environment: Decision-making for Sustainability

The Getty Conservation Institute (GCI), in cooperation with the Institute of Art History of the Czech Academy of Sciences (IAH), held an international workshop on restoring and conserving photographic material in Prague on 13-24 July 2015. The workshop took place mainly in the premises of the Department of Photography at the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts and in the Academic Conference Centre. The principal organiser of the event on behalf of the CGI was the project specialist and photograph restorer Tram Vo, while for the IAH it was Tereza Cíglerová, who was also one of the Czech participants in the workshop. The main theme of the workshop was photographs and their environment. Suitable conditions and materials for the storing, exhibition, and transport of photographs were presented and discussed, in keeping with the latest state of knowledge and with an emphasis on constantly monitoring the environment. The insights gained were then verified and compared during numerous practical exercises and several excursions to depositories in selected research establishments. A further aim of the workshop was the strengthening of contacts between restorers from different countries and the transfer of theoretical and practical experience between the course participants and the instructors. The meeting was attended by 17 photograph restorers from the following countries: Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Italy, Japan, Argentina, and Australia. The instructors at this summer school were leading experts in the field of the restoration, conservation, and preventive care of photographs, and in some cases researchers working on projects relating to the quality of the environment of the artistic heritage. They were: Bertrand Lavédrine (Centre de Recherche sur la Conservation des Collections, Paris), Sylvie Pénichon (The Art Institute of Chicago), Tomáš Vyhlídal (Czech Technical University, Prague), Jana Krizanova (Academy of Fine Arts and Design, Bratislava/Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) and Jiří Smolík (The Institute of Chemical Process Fundamentals, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague). The event was also financially supported by the Czech Academy of Sciences and the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague.