Description
The project responds to the genuine and widely signaled need, felt in both Poland and Norway, to preserve and make available photography as a unique kind of heritage. Its objective is to develop new working methods and to popularise and improve general knowledge in the field of preventive conservation and digitisation of photography through expert collaboration. An international group of conservators, archivists, curators and artists look at the selected collections in Poland and Norway, in order to develop modern methods of protection and presentation. The project contributes to the development of new, efficient and economic strategies to safeguard and gear up access to photographic heritage. The project's aims are reached through: expert study visits/residencies in centres specialised in the protection of photography, series of workshop seminars, two artistic and a major exposition. Permanent results include a publication as well as a programme of preventive conservation workshops complete with workshop materials. The project is aimed at the photography archivists and enthusiasts, specialists and custodians of non-institutional photographic archives as well as at academic communities. The Telemark Museum, Oppland Archive, Sogn og Fjordane county municipal archives, and Gjøvik University College (Norway) are involved in this project as partners. Thanks to the project the leader and the partners will gain a chance to become precursors in the preservation and promotion of photographic heritage in their regions.
Summary of project results
The project responded to the genuine and widely signaled need, felt in both Poland and Norway, to preserve and make available photography as a unique kind of heritage.Its objective was to develop new working methods and to popularise and improve general knowledge in the field of preventive conservation and digitisation of photography through expert collaboration. An international group of conservators, archivists, curators and artists looked at the selected collections in Poland and Norway, in order to develop modern methods of protection and presentation. The project contributed to the development of new, efficient and economic strategies to safeguard and gear up access to photographic heritage. The project's aims were reached through: expert study visits/residencies in centres specialised in the protection of photography, series of workshop seminars, two artistic and a major exposition. Permanent results included a publication as well as a programme of preventive conservation workshops complete with workshop materials. The project was aimed at the photography archivists and enthusiasts, specialists and custodians of non-institutional photographic archives as well as at academic communities. The Telemark Museum, Oppland Archive, Sogn og Fjordane county municipal archives, and Gjøvik University College (Norway) were involved in this project as partners. Thanks to the project the leader and the partners gained a chance to become precursors in the preservation and promotion of photographic heritage in their regions.
Summary of bilateral results
The Partners were responsible for contributing content to the expert meetings, conducting surveys of their own collections, drawing up a plan of visits at their own institutions, as well as providing illustration and factual materials for the publication. The partners were responsible for organising the Norwegian presentations of the photographic exhibition, their publicity, and for organising an exhibition accompanying programme.The partners’ involvement in project resulted in new international contacts, diagnose of the condition of parts of its photographic collections, promotion and significant improvement of knowledge on how to work with and store archival photography. The partnership is expected to have a wide-ranging impact, primarily through the planned publication and a series of workshops at Poland’s regional cities, aimed at distributing the knowledge and new solutions developed in the course of the bilateral expert meetings.