NFSA blog entries by Darren Weinert

Can you identify the bug that was glued between glass slides over 100 years ago?

The International Centre of Photography (ICP) is located at 1133 Avenue of the Americas between 43rd and 44th Street New York. The digitisation department and photographic collection is located on the 12th floor and, incidentally, has the best view from its lunchroom I have ever seen!

The Image Permanence Institute of Rochester (IPI) makes it their business to test photographic material of all types, for all types of stability issues. These include exposure to light, contaminants and chemicals. Part of the Rochester Institute of Technology College’s Department of Imaging Arts and Sciences, the Institute just celebrated their 25th anniversary.

Carol Galbraith, the motion picture laboratory specialist in film inspection at the Library of Congress, took me on a tour through the film preparation area. This section of the Library of Congress complex is responsible for the inspection, cleaning and repair of film. Films are carefully inspected over light-boxes on work benches and any damage is noted and repaired. The repairs can vary from a single perforation replacement to a major repair of missing frame sections. The repaired film is then cleaned in an ultrasonic film cleaner and then goes to the timing/grading area.

Monday and Tuesday (17 and 18 May) I spent at the Library of Congress, Packard Campus for Audio-Visual Conservation in Culpeper, Virginia.

The majority of this complex is hidden underground and houses 6.3 million collection items; 1.2 million moving image, 3 million recorded sound and 2.1 million supporting documents such as scripts, posters and photos. The building site was originally used by the US Federal Reserve Bank Center and after an extensive rebuild was officially opened by the Library of Congress in 2007.

Friday the 14^th saw me start the day with Juan Vrijs from Haghefilm for a lesson in film repair and splicing. I was joined by two L. Jeffrey Selznick School students, Josh Haidet from Alliance, Ohio and HyunJu Jang from South Korea. Juan took us through film preparation and a variety of repair techniques including ultrasonic film splicing and film sprocket repair. Careful examination of film to be duplicated is essential. This ensures any damage to the sprocket holes or film surface is repaired prior to the film being duplicated, thus reducing the chance of further damage occurring to the film during the duplication process.

Recently Technicolor donated a large and extremely important collection to George Eastman House (GEH). I was lucky enough to have a glimpse of this collection while given a tour of the Gleason Storage Facility. The collection includes motion picture cameras and printing equipment as well as papers such as technical drawings. This important collection will eventually be made available to the public to view.

Today I visited the Motion Picture Department at George Eastman House (GEH) which is run by the delightful team of Nancy Kauffman and Dianna Ford. This department is responsible for the digitisation of photographic stills, posters and paper documents, all relating to Motion Pictures. One could say they are the sister department to Still image services at the NFSA, where I am based. I found many similarities between the two sections. One issue we both have is the ongoing battle of scanning collection material at as high a resolution as possible but keeping in mind the limited space available for the storage of the digital files.

After over 24 hours of travel in four different aircraft I finally arrived in Rochester, NY, on a rainy Friday night. I was met by the smiling faces of Jeff and Deb Stoiber from George Eastman House. Over the weekend I was taken on a tour of Buffalo, NY, by Jeff, Deb and past NFSA/GEH Exchange participant Tim Wagner. We met up with Juan and Gerard from Haghefilm, Amsterdam, and two students from the L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation, Maggie Yin and HyunJu Jang. A great time was had by all and Tim made the perfect tour guide.

Last Friday I left Canberra for New York to participate in the NFSA/George Eastman House (GEH) Exchange Program.

As well as George Eastman House, Rochester, NY, I’ll visit the International Centre for Photography and the Metropolitan Museum of Art , then the Library of Congress Audio-Visual Conservation Centre in Culpeper, Virginia.