How the City of Paris Preserves 13 Million Photographs | Conservation Lab

In art institutions across the globe, time machines and investigation rooms exist behind closed doors. Dusty artworks go in and come out looking centuries younger; artists’ secrets are brought to light; and hidden, unfinished images emerge from behind famous compositions. Every week, we'll peek beneath the microscope and zoom in on the art of preservation, where art meets science and just a little bit of magic: this is Conservation Lab.

The conservators who tend to the French capital’s massive photography collections aren’t just gifted caretakers—they are researchers, policymakers, and technical advisors. The Atelier de Restauration et de Conservation des Photographies de la Ville de Paris (“Center for the Restoration and Conservation of Photographs of the City of Paris,” or, thankfully, ARCP, for short) establishes the standards of treatment that help preserve the photographs stored in the city’s museums, libraries and archives. That’s over 13 million objects in total, whose broad range of materials and techniques trace the entire history of photography, from its earliest beginnings to the present day.

“Photography was born in Paris,” Anne Cartier-Bresson, the director of the ARCP (and niece of a certain famous photographer), reminds us. “And right away the City of Paris commissioned photographs for administrative purposes—to document the city’s architecture, its residents, and important figures of Parisian life.” Recognizing that this treasure trove required a centralized think-tank to ensure its survival, the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs backed the establishment of the ARCP in 1983.

Today, the municipal collections are mined regularly for major exhibitions across the city, and this is, in large part, where the ARCP’s team of experts come in: putting together condition reports, remedying problems whenever necessary, stabilizing the objects so as to prevent future damage, preparing them for public presentation, and advising curators on technical matters. And when a photograph is too rare or fragile to be loaned out for exhibitions, the curator in charge can call on the ARCP to make an accurate facsimile that will travel in its stead.

With Bastille Day around the corner on the day of our visit, a few conservators and a framing expert mill around the lab with more elbow room than usual. Conservator Stéphanie Ledamoisel comes back from a nearby library for the occasion, where she’s been working on-site—as is often the case. “We move objects as little as possible. If they come here, it means they really need to be treated here,” explains her boss. “This is the clinic—it’s the hospital. Once the patients are cured, they go back home, back into the collection.”

Ledamoisel pulls out a few examples of 19th century plates she’s been working on, from the Roger Viollet collection. She points to rainbow effects on the edges of the plates, caused by pollutants and humidity seeping in between the plate and the protective glass. Her work has centered on halting those destructive processes by reconstructing the mounts so they are as airtight as possible, and isolating the plates from problematic elements, such as non-archival mats and paper backings. On one large silver plate from 1859 (a portrait of a girl holding a doll, which is apparently a widely sought subject in the world of photography collecting), the stamped hallmark reads “Christofle,” well known today as a manufacturer of fine silver products.

Nearby, her colleague Sandra Saïd is working with an intern on autochromes, an early color photography process patented in 1903 by the Lumière brothers, which remained popular until the mid 1920s. “Have you ever seen one of these under the microscope?” she asks, setting up the plate under the lens in order to reveal a network of green, red, and purple dots, which are coated onto the glass plate to act as color filters.

Another conservator, Ragounathe Coridon, uses a mixture of water and ethanol to remove adhesive from the edges of a photograph, one millimeter at a time. He steps into the wet lab to explain how he flattens prints—humidifying both sides by sandwiching the print with damp blotters and layers of Gore-Tex, then weighting them down as they dry.

It’s all methodical, patient work, and the guiding ethos here is minimalism. “We’re not into camouflage,” comments Ledamoisel. For the most part, areas of loss or alteration are considered part of the history of the object, and the ARCP is mainly focused on halting disintegration in its tracks rather than reversing prior damage. Even with protocols in place, however, the final course of treatment requires certain judgment calls. As she points to a torn corner on the backing paper of a framed daguerreotype, Ledamoisel illustrates this plainly: “I decided not to do a reintegration there. It was a choice; someone else could have easily made a different one.”

To learn more about the ARCP, go here. You can browse through one of the City’s major photography collections, from the Musée Carnavalet, here.

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