International Council of Archives

The International Conference, Thirty Years of Science on Photographic Conservation, will be held on June 20-23, with a subsequent two day epilogue for the National Conference. Both of them will take place at the Conference venue Escuela Superior de diseño de La Rioja in the city of Logroño.

The science of conservation and restoration of cultural heritage on photographic support is a professional field that has been developed in the last thirty years.

Despite being so new, it has assumed the responsibility to contribute, from numerous institutions and working groups, to the permanence of such heritage contained in photographic records. And so it has strengthened the criteria for identifying materials; it has established diagnostic techniques, intervention protocols and a methodology for the custody,  access and cultural exploitation, all of this within the practice of the code of ethics of this profession.

Thirty years of research and scientific work have produced a huge amount of information, much of which is in full force while other has become obsolete or is out of the parameters of our code of ethics. However, its coexistence with the information contained in the Internet causes certain effects that need to be corrected.

Numerous professionals believe that the time has arrived to review our field, summarize its history and point out the direction which marks the immediate future of our activity.

We therefore propose the holding a conference whose proceedings allow to review how the different areas of our profession have developed and point out the operating lines of work for each of them.

ÁNGEL Mª FUENTES, Conference Director.

Official website (in English and Spanish).