Over the past few years, the Missouri Historical Society’s Photos and Prints Department has undertaken a large-scale project to fully process one of its largest photographic collections, the Sievers Studio Collection.
Estimated at over 253 linear feet, the collection contains the life’s work of Sievers Commercial Photographers (later renamed Sievers Photographers), a commercial photography studio that operated in St. Louis during the twentieth century. Isaac Sievers founded the studio in downtown St. Louis in 1917. His son, Alvin, joined the studio after World War II and eventually took over and ran the business until 1989. Alvin started donating what would become the collection to the Missouri Historical Society (MHS) in 1996.
The collection’s unique images of social history in twentieth-century St. Louis gained attention and necessitated in-depth arrangement and description to better understand and care for the materials and make them more accessible to the public. Associate Archivist Lauren Sallwasser initiated the project in 2016 when processing Series 3: Job Files, 1930-1939. In December 2018, I took over processing responsibilities of the collection as the IMLS Sievers Studio Processing Archivist, a position made possible through funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services’ Museums for America grant program. As of June 2023, I have already completely processed Series 4: Job Files, 1940-1949 [76.94 linear feet] and Series 5: Job Files, 1950-1959 [32.25 linear feet] and am currently working on Series 6: Job Files, 1960-1969 [20.46 linear feet and counting].
There is more to the project than just processing, though. It became apparent early on that preservation and conservation were integral, too. The collection contains a large variety of different photographic media – glass plate negatives, cellulose acetate and nitrate negatives, transparencies, and prints, to name just a few – in varying states of condition. They needed to be cared for properly to ensure their long-term access and use. To tackle such challenges, I undertook both ongoing, daily tasks that went hand-in-hand with processing and treatments conducted in reaction to an obvious and/or known hazard.
Daily Tasks
As part of my processing work, I rehouse the materials in acid-free boxes, envelopes, and/or folders according to their media type, color, and size. This allows my department and I to better read the conditions of the photographic materials and know quickly when any are at risk of deterioration or damage. It does require spreading materials from the same grouping across many locations. Sievers Photographers had originally organized the materials into “jobs” according to the client who made the order and the date when the order was completed. The studio then assigned a unique id number using their own numbering system. Each job has either the same or different formats based on the needs of the order made. Although the original order of the jobs is broken physically by rehousing the materials in this fashion, it is intellectually preserved by cataloging all formats from each job file in a single catalog record, labeling the envelopes and prints with their respective MHS id numbers derived from the original numbering system, and recording their new locations in their Mimsy XG database records. Condition reports are linked to these database records, either at the box, job, and image levels for Series 4 or box and image levels for Series 5 and Series 6.
Cellulose acetate and nitrate both require special attention in their care and handling. Such film types are unstable and chemically decompose over time. Nitrate itself is flammable, so it can cause a fire hazard if we’re not careful in storing it. My department keeps a close eye on boxes containing such media and record any changes in their degradation according to the stages described in Monique Fischer’s “5.1 A Short Guide to Film Base Photographic Materials” on the Northeast Document Conservation Center’s website. While we can only use our senses to inspect nitrate film, we use both our senses and A-D strips to survey acetate film.
If there are signs that a box’s acetate or nitrate film are approaching the final stages of their lifecycle, we then prepare them for cold storage. We first photograph the box’s contents to have digital copies for reference requests, decreasing the number of times we would need to physically pull them out again. We then wrap the box tightly in two layers of plastic before transferring it to our offsite walk-in freezer for long-term storage.
Some materials, unfortunately, necessitated deaccessioning. Any film materials that have deteriorated to their final stage of deterioration (e.g. nitrate film crumbling apart into a brownish acid powder or acetate film forming channels across its surfaces) or any photographic materials that are so badly damaged that they are illegible are set aside and reviewed for deaccessioning. If selected for deaccessioning, their database records are updated with the new status and a deaccession record is filled out. Thereafter MHS’s Curatorial Collections Committee and our governing board’s Collections and Exhibitions Subcommittee must approve the deaccessions before we can properly dispose of them. We send deaccessioned acetate film to TerraCycle which aims to recycle as much of the material as possible in an environmentally friendly way. Currently, we are still looking for a vendor to dispose of deaccessioned nitrate film.
Reactionary Treatments
There have been cases, though, where damage has already occurred, and the materials need special attention, time, and resources to retain as much of their legibility as possible.
One such challenge has been broken glass plate negatives, primarily present in Series 4. Such negatives had been found broken prior to processing. When caring for them, my main aim is not to magically “glue” them back together. Instead, I focus on keeping the pieces together while preventing further damage. Following the Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts’ instructions recorded in Carolyn L. Rose and Amparo R. de Torres’s Storage of Natural History Collections: Ideas and Practical Solutions, Vol. II, I construct enclosures to store broken glass plate negatives. In each enclosure, I place the broken pieces of a broken glass plate negative on a sink mat and space the pieces apart using spacers. Such enclosures keep all the pieces together and protect the pieces from further breakage or general wear and tear.
Another set of challenges faced are mold and water damage. Parts of Series 5 and Series 6 had suffered water damage prior to their donation. They were not allowed to properly dry afterwards which caused some of the materials to stick together and provided a breeding ground for mold. We turned to Object Conservator Crista Pack for guidance about the best approaches for both.
To head off any health hazards posed by mold, Digitization Archivist Melissa Tucker and I used a vacuum fitted with a HEPA filter to vacuum the affected materials in their original envelopes before I started processing them. We wore particulate respirator masks to not breathe in the mold and kept a record of what materials had signs of mold based on the temporary boxes they were temporarily rearranged into.
As I came across materials that stuck together due to water damage, I used two different types of treatments to separate them. If the materials were film-based, I soaked them in a distilled water bath. This involved pouring distilled water into a shallow container up to an inch in depth. I then placed the film into the bath and let them sit for at least 10-15 minutes before carefully separating them with a scalpel. If the film proved hard to separate, I let them sit for longer, checking in every 5 minutes, but no longer than 30 minutes total. Once separated, I then laid out the film on paper towels to dry.
If one or more of the materials sticking together are paper-based, I used hot steam to separate them. In this process, I first boiled water in a teapot and poured it into a bowl. I then laid out a splatter screen (bottom) and another paper towel (top) on top of the bowl to protect the materials from direct contact with water. Thereafter I laid the materials paper-side down and let them sit for a few seconds before attempting to use a scalpel to pry them apart.
Lessons Learned
Conservation and preservation are a crucial part of any in-depth processing project, whether through small daily tasks or direct treatments. Such actions help delay the inevitable decline of deterioration, allowing more time for research and preserving the information conveyed. Documentation is integral to this process. Having a record of the conditions and treatments taken not only can help explain to others what dangers the materials faced and what was done to treat them, but also helps keep track of the materials’ conservation and preservation histories and provide a groundwork for further treatments.
Sabrina Gorse, IMLS Sievers Studio Processing Archivist, Missouri Historical Society