Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut

FLORENCE DECLARATIONRECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE PRESERVATION OF ANALOGUE PHOTO ARCHIVES

Premises
The main role of photo archives, like that of every archive, is to guarantee theconservation and future accessibility of documents from the past for their possible future
use for research purposes.
The introduction of digital technologies has made new, powerful tools available forconservation and access requirements. Almost all photo archives are currently involved inelectronic cataloguing and photographic print and negative digitization projects and new
methods of online consultation have been developed.
The digital technologies applied to the archive have thus undisputed advantages.
However, for this very reason, there is a tendency to consider the consequences of theseprocesses too superficially. In particular, the debates on digitalization imply that once
digitally reproduced, the original artefacts can be removed from consultation or evendispensed with altogether. The Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut
on the other hand, supported by the other subscribers to these recommendations,believes that it is essential for the future of studies in historic, human and social sciences
to generate a greater understanding of the inescapable value of photographs andanalogue archives.
The conviction that it is useful and necessary to preserve the analogue photo archives isbased on two simple considerations:-the technologies not only condition the methods of transmission, conservation andenjoyment of the documents, but they also shape its content;-

the photographs are not simply images independent from their mount, but rather
objects endowed with materiality that exist in time and space.

An analogue photograph and its digital reproduction are not the same thing
From the premises it follows that:-an analogue photograph and its digital reproduction are two distinct objects andthey are not interchangeable. In fact, each process of translation from one format
to another is not neutral as regards the content of the object, but rather creates a
new object that is different from the original;-

the consultation of an analogue photograph is a different experience to theconsultation of its digital reproduction, as technology alters the methods ofconsuming and using the information.
1Materiality of the photographIn light of the current research interests we must overcome the traditional equivalence
between photographs and images. The photographs must be considered material objects
in time and space:-as objects, photographs have a biography that manifests in various aspects: themoment, technological conditions and aims of their production; placement in thecontext of a certain archive; assignment of one or more meanings throughinclusion in a systematic order and cataloguing; possible changes in function andmeaning over time. Information on these aspects is increasingly important forresearch;-in particular, the photographic object is characterized by tactile aspects that areindispensible for reconstructing essential moments of its biography like thetechnique, production period and history of its uses through time (through thestate of conservation, for example).

Limitations of the digital format
The digital reproduction of photographic objects runs into some important limitations:-digital technologies can provide valid instruments for the reconstruction of someissues regarding the photographic object, but they cannot reproduce its entire
biography;-in particular, the tactile aspect of the photographs cannot be reproduced in digitalformat;-digitalization tends to reduce the photographs to just one visual aspect;-consequently, the idea of total accessibility connected to the digital format is
illusory: if internet access is ideally independent of place and time, it is also
limited to a single component of the photographic object: the image.

The complexity of the photographic document
Both the visual and the material aspects represent the complexity of the photographs as
documents, namely objects that convey information. Transposition from the analogue
format to the digital format, that is to say from the continuous to the discrete, always
involves a reduction of complexity. As regards the photographs, this manifests on various
levels:-the loss of quality of the photographic object (tactility, resolution, details, surface);-

the reduction of the photographs’ biographical traces to the only elements
recorded in that specific cataloguing programme; in fact, every database ordigitalization project is conceived of to satisfy a finite (no matter how high)number of questions.

The conditioning of the interpretative possibilities is in itself inherent in each cataloguing
instrument, even in the analogue arena. But it becomes risky if the digital format
replaces the analogue, rather than completing and integrating it.

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The archive as a place of research
The study of photographs cannot be extrapolated from the context they are conserved in:
the archive. The archive is in its materiality an autonomous and unique structure, notsimply the sum of the single photographs that constitute it.
The photo archive, as is true of every archive, occupies, for human and social sciences,
the role of a laboratory, namely a place for the production and interpretation ofknowledge. Photographic archives preserve and guarantee access to the photographs as
instruments, but also as objects of research. The structures of photo archives are
simultaneously the product and mirror of the history of scientific research. Thus:-for research purposes it is not enough to guarantee access to single analogue
photographs; it is the photo archive as a whole, with its structures and functions,that must be preserved as a place and also the object of all potential present andfuture scholarly investigations;-the physical context of an analogue photo archive is quite different from thecontext of a database that allows the online consultation of digital reproductionsof single analogue photographs.

The digitized archive: selection and reduction
The selection of documents considered worthy of being conserved is implied in the natureof the archive. The digitization of an analogue archive implies a further selection: in fact,
contrary to what is argued, digitization is extremely onerous in terms of cost, time andhuman resources. Thus, the selection becomes reduction:-no matter how much money is invested in digitization, it is not realistic to thinkthat in the future all the photographic objects present in the analogue archives
will be converted into digital format with all the meta-data connected to them;-the reduction is irreversible if after digitization the analogue archive is removed,with its complexity, from free consultation.

Therefore, digitization offers new paths of interpretation, but it precludes others; itpromotes new ways of conducting research, but hinders others. Digital photo archives
generate different research questions then analogue photo archives.

The obsolescence and instability of the digital format
Faced with justified enthusiasm for new technological instruments, it is still necessary torecall the still unresolved question of the obsolescence and instability of the digital format,
with both technological and structural problems such as:-

the long-term archiving of digital information;-

the long-term stability of platform and internet functionalities.

3Conclusions
The responsibility of guaranteeing the integrity of the historic documentation entrusted tothem, independently of the format in which it has been transmitted, naturally falls tophoto archives. The digital format cannot be considered a “modern” equivalent to theanalogue format. Only integration between the analogue format and the digital format
can guarantee the correct conservation of the photographic heritage for future studies
and at the same time the implementation of digital instruments.
The preservation of analogue photo archives is also affected by the scholars who conduct
and will conduct research on history, history of art, the history of photography, thehistory of science, the history of education, social sciences, anthropology, visual studies,
Bildwissenschaft and so on. Not only the current, but all future potential scientific uses ofthe photographic documents must be respected, so that future generations of scholars
are not faced with limitations that restrict or prevent their research possibilities.
We are therefore confident that these recommendations are supported and respected byrepresentatives of both the photographic collections and university and academicresearch.

Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz–Max-Planck-Institut
Costanza Caraffa
Florence, 31st October 2009

Further information and list of subscribersFor further information about this initiative please consult our website:
https://www.khi.fi.it/en/photothek/florence-declaration.php
Here, you will find a regularly updated list of subscribers and the German, Italian,French, Polish, Arabic, Spanish and Chinese versions of the Florence Declaration.
For subscribing the declaration, please send an email todeclaration@khi.fi.it
with the subject "Florence Declaration". Please indicate your name and institution.

Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut
Via Giuseppe Giusti 4450121 Florence – ItalyTel.: +39 055-24911-1
Fax: +39 055-24911-55
www.khi.fi.it4

Selected bibliography (updated 2022):
Joan M. Schwartz, “‘We make our tools and our tools make us’: Lessons from
Photographs for the Practice, Politics, and Poetics of Diplomatics”, in: Archivaria 40(1995), pp. 40–74.
Geoffrey Batchen, Photography’s Objects, Albuquerque 1997.
Joan M. Schwartz, “‘Records of Simple Truth and Precision’: Photography, Archives, andthe Illusion of Control”, in: Archivaria 50 (2000), pp. 1–40.
Elizabeth Edwards, Raw Histories: Photographs, Anthropology and Museums, Oxford-NewYork 2001.
Elizabeth Edwards, Janice Hart (ed.), Photographs Objects Histories. On the Materiality ofImages, London-New York 2004.
Marlene Manoff, “Theories of the Archive from Across the Disciplines”, in: Libraries andthe Academy, Vol. 4, No. 1 (2004), pp. 9–25.
Joanna Sassoon, “Photographic Materiality in the Age of Digital Reproduction”, in:Elizabeth Edwards, Janice Hart (ed.), Photographs Objects Histories. On the Materiality ofImages, London-New York 2004, pp. 186–202.
Marlene Manoff, “The Materiality of Digital Collections: Theoretical and Historical
Perspectives”, in: Libraries and the Academy, Vol. 6, No. 3 (2006), pp. 311–325.
Nina Lager Vestberg, “Archival Value. On Photography, Materiality and Indexicality”, in:Photographies, Vol. 1, No. 1 (2008), pp. 49–65.
Kelley Wilder, “Photography and the Archive”, in: Kelley Wilder, Photography and Science,London 2009, pp. 79–101.
Costanza Caraffa (ed.), Photo Archives and the Photographic Memory of Art History,
Berlin-München 2011.
Joan M. Schwartz, “The Archival Garden: Photographic Plantings, Interpretive Choices,and Alternative Narratives”, in: Terry Cook (ed.), Controlling the Past: Documenting
Society and Institutions, Chicago 2011, pp. 69–110.
Costanza Caraffa, Tiziana Serena (ed.), Photo Archives and the Idea of Nation, BerlinMünchen-Boston 2014.
Costanza Caraffa: “Manzoni in the Photothek. Photographic Archives as Ecosystem”, in:Hana Buddeus, Vojtĕch Lahoda, Katarína Mašterová (ed.), Instant Presence:Representing Art in Photography. In Honor of Josef Sudek (1896 – 1976), Prague 2017,
pp. 121–136.
Julia Bärnighausen, Costanza Caraffa, Stefanie Klamm, Franka Schneider, Petra Wodke(ed.), Photo-Objects. On the Materiality of Photographs and Photo Archives in theHumanities and Sciences, Berlin 2019 (https://www.mprlseries.mpg.de/studies/12/index.html).

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