Postgraduate Program in Photography Preservation

The Postgraduate Program in Photography Preservation has both a theoretical and practical side, with a strong empirical and experimental component. It addresses, in a generic way, the main issues and problems of photography preservation and puts forward answers and solutions used in this area.

Photographic images have been universally accepted since the mid-nineteenth century as one of the main documentary sources of history. The preservation of photographs is the preservation of a fundamental part of humankind’s collective memory.

This postgraduate program aims to meet the needs of those who come across photography collections in their everyday life, whether through their professional life or through personal taste or vocation. It intends to contribute to a better understanding of the photographic object, its insertion in the historical context, to substantiate the knowledge on the constituent materials, their fragilities and deficiencies and on the appropriate and often used preservation techniques. 

Over two semesters students will acquire skills that will allow them to take a practical and experimental approach to the various aspects of photography preservation, without neglecting the inherent fundamentals and theoretical understanding, while enabling contact with the world of photography preservation, with specialists and with the Portuguese institutions that develop a modeling practice in this area..