Conservation of the photography collectionConservation of the photography collection

In 2016, Het Nieuwe Instituut began a long-term project to conserve the estimated 300,000 photographs in the collection of the State Archive for Dutch Architecture and Urban Planning. The first 50,000 photos have already been conserved and digitised.

The collection, dating from around 1870 to the present, contains a great variety of different photographic techniques, including nineteenth-century albumen and collodion prints, tiny black-and-white prints from the 1930s, unstable colour prints from the 1970s, polaroid snapshots and modern large-format prints.

Photographs were often used in architecture practices as part of the design process. They were stuck into albums or collages or, as evinced from the many small holes, pinned to the wall to serve as inspiration or clarification of a design or construction process. It is therefore a collection with lots of dog-ears, surface dirt, fingerprints, small tears and a lot of tape. Tape that now means that some photos are stuck together or tape that has come loose so that the order of the photos in an album or collage has now become a puzzle.

During earlier conservation projects in the 1990s, part of the photography collection was packed in acid-free boxes, but a large number of photographs remain scattered among other archival documents and drawings, as they were when they were acquired from the architect. In many cases, it is noted that there are photographs in a file, but not how many and exactly where.

In keeping with the latest insights into the preservation of photographic collections, we are exploring the possibility of transferring the collection to cold storage. Low temperatures slow down the deterioration of photographs, thus considerably lengthening the life of the collection. But cold storage also had consequences for the accessibility of the materials. Frozen photographs cannot simply be delivered to the reading room for consultation.

Digitisation and improved cataloguing is therefore required in order to continue to facilitate research into the photos when they can no longer be consulted directly. For this reason, both the fronts and backs of the photographs are being digitised. Alongside dates, locations and photographers' stamps, the reverse of the photographs often feature notes made by the architect or remarks relating to publications in which they have appeared.

In 2016, a pilot scheme was launched for the conservation and digitisation of the first 50,000 photographs. Each photo was given an individual number, the cataloguing information was checked and the photographs were divided by format and packed in acid-free boxes. Approximately 300 photographs were in such poor condition that they had to be treated by a photographic restorer. 2500 photographs and dozens of albums that were fragile or had outsized formats were digitised with great care by specialists in Het Nieuwe Instituut's digitisation team. The large majority of the photographs were in good condition and were digitised by an external agency.