Book of Abstracts
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BOOK OF ABSTRACTS Colour Photography and Film: sharing knowledge of analysis, preservation, conservation, migration of analogue and digital materials March 29-30, 2021 Organised by Gruppo del Colore – Associazione Italiana Colore Under the patronage of Opificio delle Pietre Dure and Institute of Applied Physics “Nello Carrara” of the Italian Research Council (IFAC-CNR) Program Committee Barbara Cattaneo Marcello Picollo Organizing Committee Barbara Cattaneo Marcello Picollo Andrea Siniscalco Veronica Macchiafava Filippo Cherubini Scientific Committee Barbara Cattaneo Opificio delle Pietre Dure (OPD), Florence (Italy) Istituto di Fisica Applicata “Nello Carrara” of the Consiglio Nazionale Costanza Cucci delle Ricerche (IFAC-CNR), Florence (Italy) Giovanna Fossati Eye Filmmuseum / University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam (NL) Bertrand Lavédrine Centre de Recherche sur la Conservation (CRC), Paris (France) Tom Learner Getty Conservation Institute, Los Angeles (USA) Austin Nevin Courtauld Institute of Art, London (UK) Sylvie Pénichon The Art Institute of Chicago (AIC), Chicago (USA) Roberta Piantavigna San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco (USA) Istituto di Fisica Applicata “Nello Carrara” of the Consiglio Nazionale Marcello Picollo delle Ricerche (IFAC-CNR), Florence (Italy) Katrin Pietsch University of Amsterdam (UvA), Amsterdam (The Netherlands) Alice Plutino Università degli Studi di Milano, Milan (Italy) Alessandro Rizzi Università degli Studi di Milano, Milan (Italy) Yoko Shiraiwa Shiraiwa Conservation Studio, Tokyo (Japan) Giorgio Trumpy University of Zurich, Zurich (Switzerland) 2 INDEX ORAL SESSION 1 – March 29th 2021, 10:00 -11:20……………………………………………….4 ORAL SESSION 2 – March 29th 2021, 11:30 -12:50……………………………………………… 7 ORAL SESSION 3 – March 29th 2021, 13:40 – 15:00……………………………………………10 ORAL SESSION 4 – March 29th 2021, 15:10 – 16:30……………………………………………14 POSTER SESSION 1 – March 29th 2021, 16:50 -17:50…………………………………………17 ORAL SESSION 5 – March 29th 2021, 18:00 – 18:20……………………………………………23 ORAL SESSION 6 – March 30th 2021, 10:00 – 11:20……………………………………………25 ORAL SESSION 7 – March 30th 2021, 11:30 – 12:30……………………………………………28 POSTER SESSION 2 – March 30th 2021, 13:45 – 14:50………………………………………..29 ORAL SESSION 8 – March 30th 2021, 15:00 – 16:00…………………………………………....36 ORAL SESSION 9 – March 30th 2021, 16:10 – 17:10……………………………………………39 3 ORAL SESSION 1 – March 29th 2021, 10:00 -11:20 The Jos-Pe process in the Jacob Merkelbach collection at the Rijksmuseum of Amsterdam Laura Covarsí Rijksmuseum The Rijksmuseum Amsterdam holds a collection of 208 photographs from the Merkelbach Studio (1907-1961 in Amsterdam). At least 28 were made with the Jos-Pe technique, which was invented in Hamburg in 1924 and remained in use for 20 years. This photographic process allowed Jacob Merkelbach to offer his clients a product that was very exclusive in the 1930s: color prints. This dye imbibition process is part of the early history of commercial color photography, as is Kodak’s Dye Transfer prints (1946-1990). Books dedicated to color photography only have sparse information about this specific technique. The fact that the Jos- Pe process was commercialized under several patents makes it even more difficult to find detailed technical information. Unfortunately, none of the patents reveal information relevant to their conservation: the materials used to make them. This research project begun with the characterization and visual examination of Jos-Pe prints on paper and three-color printing screens on glass that are part of the Rijksmuseum’s Merkelbach collection. The scope was soon extended through the study and comparison of these objects with the collection of an Spanish amateur photographer held at the Institut d’Estudis Fotogràfics de Catalunya (IEFC) in Barcelona. This archive includes booklets from the Jos-Pe company, invoices and correspondence, print examples and never used Jos-Pe paper. The Rijksmuseum Jos-Pe prints and plates, as well as (aged) mock-ups were examined and analyzed with different techniques: specular light, UV fluorescence, microscopy, XRF, liquid chromatography UPLC and spectrophotometry. A cross section obtained from an unexposed JosPe paper kept at the IEFC made it possible to determine the prints’ structure: a paper coated with a thin layer of barium sulfate, topped with a thin layer of gelatin. The analyzed glass plates revealed the use of dyes such as Carmine, Induline Blue and Dianil Yellow 2R. Fading tests performed on mock-ups made of the red dye showed a 1-2 Blue Wool Standard lightfastness. The lightfastness of the blue and yellow dyes is the subject of further ongoing research. So far, these findings have provided valuable insight into this early commercial colour photographic technique. The results of this research provide a better way to identify and understand Jos-Pe examples in collections and consequently adjust standards related to their preventive conservation, treatment procedures and display options. Truelight and Film Simulation Richard Kirk FilmLight Truelight was an early FilmLight product that simulated the look of film on a monitor. This allowed graders to preview how their digital images might appear when recorded to film, printed, and projected on a screen. This involved charactering each part of the film-out process 4 as it was in about 2004: the recorder and internegative stock, the print lab and the print stock, and the projector and its lamp spectrum. Truelight provides a snapshot of the whole grading and film out process when film list dominated motion pictures. The tools that Truelight used also allowed us to capture existing film processes, such as bleach bypass, and cross-processing; and also to simulate old processes, such as Kodachrome, and Technicolor. “Ceci n’est pas un Polaroid”. The materials and colours of Paolo Gioli’s works Sandra Maria Petrillo SMP Internaytional Photo Conservation Studio The phrase “Ceci n’est pas un Polaroid” (This is not a Polaroid) is a reference to Magritte’s famous painting “Ceci n’est pas un pipe”, with which the surrealist painter ironically presented the relationship between reality, representation and meaning. Paolo Gioli (born at Sarzano in 1942, currently residing in Lendinara, Veneto region – Italy) brought much the same kind of disruptive energy to the art of photography, which he came to after a training in painting and experimental cinema. In Milan, in the mid-seventies, he started to use the Polaroid not so much as an industrial photographic procedure with a commercial use, but as an extremely versatile expressive means for exploring materials and colours, which can go far beyond the “instant photo” invented by Edwin Land. In an operation that the surrealists would have approved, the artist deconstructs and reinvents the various Polaroid formats and processes for his own creative purposes, using all the constitutive elements of their multiple physical and chemical layers of materials and dyes. He intervenes on every element of the Polaroid process, disassembling the films, paper supports, protective layers, frames and templates made of black paper and metallized plastic, as well as the chemical reagents themselves, manipulating them with his personal artistic gestures, and finally attaching them to the centre of a sheet of drawing paper. The result of this extraordinary kind of modern alchemy is a series of what he defines as “compositions”. These compound images are made of film negatives and photographic paper, or are the result of Polaroid “transfers” onto paper, using the emulsions as a printing matrix. In the darkroom Gioli intervenes on the photosensitive layers of his images, produced by contact or projection. He uses the chemical reagents to create an additional image on the white and semi-transparent weave of pieces of serigraph silk, and then adds them to his compositions next to the photographic positive. Light is an important compositional element in the artist’s work and it is applied, often playfully, by shining it through cardboard templates, which trace luminous geometric marks in all the colours of the visible spectrum. He often expands the picture space of his compositions with the addition of miniscule strokes of graphite and coloured pencils. Painting, photography and cinema all converge in Gioli's work. He deconstructs and re- constitutes a range of artistic approaches and techniques, in addition to the complex relationship between visual representation and reality. In recent years SMP Studio has conducted many preventive conservation and restoration interventions on Gioli’s works, thereby acquiring an in-depth knowledge of the artist’s techniques and the conservation issues regarding the particularly fragile materials and colours involved. We are now willing to share our expertise in this presentation. 5 The long-term development of three-color Kodachrome. An odyssey from the additive to the subtractive method of color reproduction Nicolas Le Guern Independent researcher / Cokin KT s.a.s.u The introduction of three-color Kodachrome in 1935 was possible thanks to the long collaboration between the independent inventors Leopold Mannes and Leopold Godowsky and the managers of the Kodak Research Laboratory at Rochester, New York. This presentation considers this long research work initiated in 1917 by examining the technological solutions Mannes and Godowsky progressively followed, in the historical context of the first cinematographic additive processes. The two researchers tried to improve the additive technology of color