Wybrane zagadnienia dotyczące budowy i sporządzania negatywów kolodionowych na podłożu szklanym w zakładzie rodziny Kriegerów

Abstrakt

SELECTED ISSUES CONCERNING THE CHARACTERISTICS AND PRODUCTION OF COLLODION NEGATIVES ON GLASS SUPPORTS AT THE STUDIO OF THE KRIEGER FAMILY

Since 1967, the Museum of Kraków has been in possession of a collection of negatives manufactured by Ignacy Krieger’s studio. The negatives acquired by the museum had been produced via the application of the collodion wet plate technique and the gelatin silver process. Due to the artistic value and uniqueness of wet plate collodion photography, it was decided that conservation of the negatives representing that technique would be the utmost priority. The museum was granted a subsidy for the conservation of the collection from the funds of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. A two-year project was drawn up and launched in 2017; the goals of the project included the evaluation and documentation of the negatives’ condition, the precise description of the plates in terms of photographic techniques used (which was achieved by means of analytical tests), and the conservation thereof based on an individual approach to each item. The result of the aforesaid conservation works was the cleaning of and application of protective measures to over 3,600 negatives, of which 359 items required specialist conservation treatment and individualised archiving solutions. Among that group, some of the exhibits were cracked, or broken, some had revealed serious delamination of the image layer from the glass support, as well as cracked and powdery retouch layer. After the completion of conservation works, the collodion negatives were transferred to the Digitization Lab of the Museum of Kraków where the digital copies thereof were created to be subsequently made accessible to the public.