Humidity has compromised a legacy of 12,000 19th century photographs
The Ministry of Culture will “correct and improve” the environmental and conservation conditions of the Institute of Cultural Heritage of Spain (IPCE) in Madrid, which houses the Jean Laurent collection, one of the country’s greatest photographic treasures. Moisture threatens this legacy due to the incorrect air conditioning of the headquarters, this newspaper reports.
Old collodion glass negatives, such as those in the Laurent collection, should be kept at a relative humidity between 30 and 40%, which can never exceed 50%. But after some reform works that cost 1.5 million euros, they are now exposed to humidity levels of more than 60%, according to a complaint from the CSIF union.
Miquel Iceta’s department has set up a multidisciplinary group of restorers, preventive conservation specialists, geologists and maintenance personnel to “follow the pieces like never before and study their degree of conservation”.
In addition to correcting the air conditioning, Cultura finds that the carriers in which the negatives have been stored for years are inadequate and announces that they will be replaced “with neutral PH carriers that do not cause acidification, as has been the case up to now”. now.”
The origins of the deterioration began in June, when IPCE management changed the air conditioning of the organization’s headquarters, located in a building classified as a property of cultural interest and popularly known as “the crown of thorns,” in the university city of Madrid.
The new cooling system, which works by means of ‘fan coils’, water-to-air devices consisting of a coil or heat or cold exchanger (‘coil’) and a fan (‘fan’), increased the relative humidity of the riser to 70% , which causes a process known as leaching, a chemical breakdown that disfigures them.
The Laurent Collection consists of nearly 12,000 photographs taken between 1856 and 1886 that uniquely depict Spanish life, landscapes and monuments of the 19th century.
Source: La Verdad
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