“A part of the country's photographic memory got wet
,” photography fans warned when they found out what happened in the
General Archive of the Nation (AGN)
. During the weekend, the emblematic building was one more victim of the continuous thefts of water meters in the City, which caused a leak of water into the subsoil and, therefore,
a significant amount of period photographic material was damaged.
.
From the AGN they explained to
Clarín
that the incident occurred during the weekend of April 13 and 14. “The affected documentation is mainly photographic and
it is estimated that there are close to 1,500 boxes that suffered some type of contact with water
, which does not mean that they were all under water,” they detailed.
“All of us in the field of the history of photography
are very concerned about what happened
, because the archive has more than a million photographs and is the largest historical photographic repository that the country has, there is nothing superior,” laments Abel Alexander , who in addition to being a researcher, collector and curator of photographic funds is the president of the
Ibero-American Society of History of Photography
.
The highly experienced specialist warned that between 30 and 40 centimeters of water entered
the institution headed by Emilio Perina as a result of the leak
. “For many years I have criticized the measure of leaving the unclassified negative and photographic archive in the underground. At the time they told us that they were not uploading it due to a weight issue. It was expected that this would happen, because it had already happened 30 years ago and in 2009.
It was a tragedy foretold
,” says Alexander.
What were the damages?
According to the photo historian, the archives of glass negatives, flexible negatives and original positives have been kept in that basement for decades.
These materials are distributed in several documentary collections dating from the end of the 19th century and the middle of the 20th century.
Most of it had previously been cleaned and conditioned by the Antorchas Foundation (which stopped operating), an entity that provided assistance to entities with preservation materials.
The affected glass negatives (silver bromide gelatin) were, some, from “Diario Crítica” and “Caras y Caretas”
. “The latter documented the entire period from 1898 to 1939. In the archive of that magazine there was the material of the different photographic correspondents who sent what was happening in each town in the country,” Alexander explained.
In addition, photographs from the Witcomb photography studio
were damaged ,
a very important place that was located at Florida 364 and was very popular with Buenos Aires aristocratic families at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. The company continued operating until 1970, the year in which the house's photographic collection - estimated at more than half a million negatives - became part of the General Archive of the Nation.
“Alejandro Witcomb's photographic house was a very popular place at that time. He bought the archive from the famous and renowned Portuguese photographer Christiano Junior,” he explains.
Damage to photographs of Fiscal Oil Fields (YPF) and Water and Electric Energy (AYE)
was also confirmed
. “It is a very painful event because it was about the photographic memory of the country. The best documentation of the past is photography, because of its fidelity, the whole story is there. At the end of the pandemic, the archive moved to its new headquarters, the different rooms were moved, but they did not plan to remove the material from the basement to prevent what happened,” he laments.
Since this Monday, AGN staff alerted the national authorities about the leak and proceeded to pump water and rescue the affected documentation. After removing all the water, they began to lift the damaged boxes to the upper floors to proceed with prompt recovery.
“The agency and the Ministry of the Interior mobilized supplies and personnel from multiple areas to carry out the necessary tasks, which
continue to be carried out to this day
. Conservators and restorers from the National Historical Museum, National Library and other institutions also collaborate. Finally, although people from different areas have been assigned to the tasks, the services aimed at citizens and communication with the public continue to operate with designated personnel,” they summarized from the General Archive of the Nation.
At the time of closing this note, operations were continuing to save all documentation. The Ministry of the Interior did not specify
which materials could not be recovered
.