Perfect Studio

The lessons of photographic history teach that there is an astonishingly rapid loss of knowledge and skill attending the commercial ascendance of one system of photography over another. Much research effort in photograph conservation has been is and will continue to be devoted to rediscovering and exploring past methods of making photographs. Historic process re-creation is a fundament of photograph conservation education. Today it is appropriate to view silver-halide based photography as an historic process even though it is still with us. The loss of knowledge of the craft of what is now being called "Traditional Photography" is ongoing. The experience of developing the latent image in wet chemistry which was in the 20th century the alchemical essence of the photographic magic will soon be unknown to most who use a camera. The ambiguity of the current definition of photography contributes to the obliteration of the past. Those who make a profession of conserving photographs must now be very clear to themselves and others about the definition of "photograph". It is a professional requisite. Outside the profession it has been recognized that the word "photograph" cannot be infinitely stretched to describe the new technology. As the bounds of the technology dissolve so does the existing profession of photograph conservation. "Info-Imaging" has been proposed as the name appropriate for the new industry now in formation. Is it thus possible that someday there will be Info-Imaging Conservation? Whatever its name will be a new profession is evolving because of revolutionary changes in technology. But it cannot anymore continue to be properly called Photograph Conservation. The legacy of 19th and 20th century photography is vast valuable and vulnerable. There is a pressing need to understand that the photography of the present and future is and will be significantly different rather than substantially the same as the photography of the past. It will increasingly be the role of the Photograph Conservator to make that difference clear. For the Photograph Conservation field to avoid establishing a common definition of what constitutes a photograph is to contribute to the forces that destroy photographs.