Archived Negatives: Preserving the Invisible
- ccconservacao
- 9 de jun.
- 5 min de leitura
Atualizado: 9 de jun.
On International Archives Day, we celebrate not only the spaces that safeguard documents, but also the ongoing work of those who care for, interpret, and give meaning to the heritage passed down to us. Among papers, maps, sound recordings, and visual objects, photographic negatives hold a particular place: they deal with images that have shaped our collective memory, yet their materiality often goes unnoticed.
This text is based on a research project dedicated to photographic retouching on dry gelatin negatives from the first half of the 20th century. A practice so often invisible, yet essential to understanding how images were conceived, constructed, and preserved. In this excerpt, we reflect on the role of archives and conservation professionals in the appreciation of these collections – and on what remains to be done.
Seeing the Negative as an Object
“Negative collections make up the majority in many historical Portuguese archives. The preservation of these objects also depends on raising public awareness.”
In photographic archives, negatives are often treated as mere intermediaries between the photographer’s gesture and the printed image. However, in many cases, they are the only surviving evidence of the creative process. More than just matrices, negatives reveal choices, corrections, and intentions — and are, in themselves, cultural objects with historical and technical value.
The practice of retouching negatives — with pencils, dyes, or varnishes — adds new layers of meaning. It reflects the desire to control the final image, to adapt it to aesthetic, social, or technical standards. Retouching was (and is) a precise and intentional act. By identifying and understanding these interventions, we gain access to a richer history of photography — one that includes gestures, workshops, and adaptations to a particular gaze.
“To learn about retouching and photographic materiality, it’s not enough to read manuals, consult historical records, or look at digital images. You need to hold the photographic object in your hands — an entire collection or at least a representative sample.”
This is where archives play a crucial role. They are spaces of preservation, but also of access and discovery. They allow negatives to be seen as unique objects, bearing marks of use, alterations, and reinvention. The value of a collection lies in direct engagement, careful analysis, rigorous documentation — and mediation strategies that reveal what tends to remain hidden.
The Exhibition as Practice and Discourse
During this research, efforts were made to counter the invisibility of retouching practices and negatives in archives. One example was the exhibition Memória Recapturada, dedicated to the Foto-Carvalho studio, active in Estremoz from 1936 to 2000. The exhibition did not merely display images — it showcased negatives, studio furniture, a camera, and recreated the work environment where retouching was a central part of the photographic practice.
“A modest attempt was made to show the negative as part of the photographer’s process — not just as an image. [...] The exhibition featured a negative on a retouching table with transmitted light, and several plates on a drying rack, along with studio objects and books.”
Rather than showing a simple "before and after", the aim was to recall the experience of the photographic studio as a space of technical and cultural production. By making the negative and the retouching visible, it gave value to the invisible work — the hand that adjusts and corrects, the silent construction of the ideal image.
Representing the Negative in the Digital Age
Today, archives face a new challenge: digital mediation. The mass digitization of collections has democratized access to images, but often at the expense of their material understanding. When negatives are presented as uncontextualized digital positives, they lose not only their physical identity but may also be misinterpreted as "final" images, detached from the photographic process that created them.
“Negative collections are often presented online as converted digital positives, distorting interpretations of the photographers’ techniques, the visual culture of the time, and photography’s own history.”
It is urgent to rethink these representational strategies. Conservators and archivists may not be image technicians or web designers, but they are the ones who know the objects best. They should therefore collaborate with digitization and communication teams to find more rigorous and innovative ways to represent negatives — as negatives — and to contextualize their place in the history and practice of photography.
Preserving the Gesture, Not Just the Glass
The history of photography is also the history of technical gestures and subjective choices. Retouching, though often associated with manipulation or falsification, was in most cases an attempt to adapt the image to the limitations of the medium and the expectations of the time. To preserve it is to acknowledge that photography was never just an automatic record: it always involved interpretation, intention, and a certain degree of artifice.
“Retouching exists as another stage of the photographic process. It is part of the object and therefore must be preserved.”
Removing or ignoring these interventions compromises the object’s integrity and erases fundamental traces of the photographer’s work. Retouching should be studied, documented, and communicated — not as a technical curiosity, but as a constitutive element of photography.
Archiving Is Also Interpretation
The conservation of retouched negatives highlights one of the core principles of archival work: the need for interpretation. Contrary to popular belief, archiving is not just about storage. It is about organizing, investigating, contextualizing. It means understanding the relationship between object, image, and intention. It’s about making information accessible without oversimplifying — allowing for multiple readings without erasing the original.
“Preserving the intention can be just as important as preserving the object.”
On this International Archives Day, we want to emphasize this idea: the archive as a space of research, responsibility, and mediation. A space where traces are preserved, but where narratives are also constructed. And where photographic retouching — so often forgotten — forces us to look more closely at what usually remains unseen.
Stay with Us
This is just one of many themes that emerged from a wider research project on photographic retouching in historical Portuguese negatives. In this space, we’ll continue sharing reflections, examples, and stories that reveal other dimensions of photography as a technical, cultural, and material object.
Join us on this journey through archives, through the history of the image, and through the hidden gestures that shaped how we see the past.
The research behind this post resulted in a doctoral thesis available here: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.14/39634
(temporarily unavailable — we’re working on it)