Starting from the Negative: images, gestures, and memories to be preserved

How does one begin a story about preserving images? Perhaps with what is rarely seen: the negative. This blog opens with a nearly invisible technical gesture — photographic retouching — as a way into broader reflections on memory, visual culture, and the role of conservation in what we choose to preserve.

Dry-plate negative, glass, silver and gelatine, 13x18 cm. Tiro-Liro Band, c.1930, Foto-Carvalho (by the author, from collection Estudios Correia, Estremoz)

Starting with a negative image is not so much about a metaphor for the reverse or for absence, but about the materiality of an object so often overlooked: the photographic negative. It was in 2009, at the 2nd Photography Week at Golegã, that I first encountered a practice almost invisible to me and to photography history: negative retouching. A technical and discreet gesture, yet full of intent. A gesture that, I would come to realise, opened the door to much broader questions about visual culture, memory, representation, and conservation.

Since then, that starting point became a long path of research. It began in an academic context but developed through projects, collaborations, exhibitions, and conservation work. And now, it continues here – in this space, with a more open tone but the same commitment. This blog was born from a desire to keep thinking – and sharing – the questions, discoveries, and concerns that have shaped my work in conservation. It stems from the act of preserving, but seeks to go beyond it.

Here you’ll find texts on varied themes. Some come directly from my research into negative retouching in Portuguese collections from the first half of the 20th century. Others emerge from different investigations, or from working with collections, archives, and specific objects. Still others offer broader reflections on image, heritage, identity, or memory. Rather than a linear sequence or curated series, this blog is an open notebook. A place where practice meets theory, where technique meets culture, where the visible and the invisible converge.

Conservation is not only to preserve objects. It is to activate gestures. To listen to the choices of those who came before us and recognise the layers – material, symbolic, social – deposited in images and artefacts. It is also to question the present: what do we choose to remember? What do we allow to fade? What stories are left untold?

Starting from the negative is, in this case, a way of looking at the reverse of the image – the backstage of photography – what is rarely shown, but which sustains what we see. That is where I want to begin. And that is where I invite you to follow.