From 19 through 23 March 2007, the State Hermitage hosted a scientific and practical seminar entitled "Inspection and Conservation of the Collection of Daguerreotypes in the State Hermitage” which was jointly arranged with the George Eastman House (USA) with support of the Mellon Foundation. This is the first stage of an extensive program to inspect the museum's photography collection.

Daguerreotypes are photographic impressions on silver-coated metallic plates. They appeared in Russia as early as the autumn of 1839, immediately after their invention by Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre. Initially it was possible to see them in the displays of art stores. Then it became possible purchase apparatus for taking a picture together with the required chemical substances. Finally, photography ateliers opened in Russia and those who wished could have images of themselves made. It was precisely portraits with their emphatic clearness of definition that met the demands of the age of "naturalism' - the 1840s. At first the Daguerreotype enterprises were opened by masters of the technique traveling through Europe who remained in Russia for several years. Then came Russian masters: A.F. Grekov, S.L. Levitsky, I.F. Aleksandrovsky and others.

The "Age of the Daguerreotypes” was brief. By the end of the 1850s they were pushed aside by cheaper duplicative photography on paper. The Daguerreotypes, which flooded Russia for two decades, were scarcely preserved. Over the course of many decades, Daguerreotypes were not viewed an art objects and were used only as illustration material, supplements to main collections of other things.

The State Hermitage collection has 73 Daguerreotypes which are stored in the Department of the History of Russian Culture. This is one of the largest collections in St Petersburg. The provenance of things is diverse. One interesting group is the Daguerreotypes from the Bobrinsky collection. Several of them were taken by À.À. himself at the very beginning of the 1840s. Some of the Hermitage Daguerreotypes bear the seals of the authors, providing us with invaluable historical material. Determining who the authors were of the remaining Daguerreotypes is a task which, one hopes, will be partly achieved in the course of this project.

The project is being developed jointly with the George Eastman House, a scientific research center, inasmuch as it is precisely in the USA that study of the Daguerreotype heritage has a tradition going back many years. It was in America that the Daguerreotype had it most stunning success. Situated at the intersection of science and art, it demanded complex professional skills and an artistic education lasting many years. In America the Daguerreotype became a truly national art. In the 1850s, several million Daguerreotype plates were produced there. Therefore American researchers were among the first to study Daguerreotypes and to face the problem of preserving Daguerreotype images. Over the course of several decades, they earned valuable scientific and practical experience.

In Russia a school of restoring photographic materials has long existed, but our specialists began to face the problem of restoring Daguerreotypes very recently. Specialists of the State Historical Museum in Moscow were among the first ones to investigate and restore a collection of Daguerreotypes. At present this is not only the largest collection of Daguerreotypes in Russia but also the best researched.

The Hermitage project for inspecting the collection of Daguerreotypes will pass through several stages. In the course of the first stage, Mr Grant Romer, Director of the Department of Restoration and Conservation of the George Eastman House museum, and restorers from the State Hermitage will carry out a primary investigation. Based on the results of the inspection and working with the curators, a plan will be elaborated and the necessary restoration work will be carried out with a goal to halting the process of fading of images using technologies that are as light and sparing as possible; conserving damaged Daguerreotypes; making new mountings and boxes from special materials for storage. All stages of the restoration will be recorded and later will be reproduced in a scientific catalogue. The catalogue will include articles by all participants in the project about the history of Daguerreotypes in the world, the history of the Hermitage collection and about the history of restoration technologies for Daguerreotypes. The catalogue will reproduce photos of the 73 Daguerreotypes in the State Hermitage collection.

At the seminar