Two nitrate film reels will be shipped out this month for preservation as part of two fellowships awarded to Selznick School graduates Sabrina Negri (Italy) and Elisabeth Rennie (Canada).

Both students have been given the opportunity to work for one month in a film lab, preparing, printing, and preserving the films from the George Eastman House Collection as an extension to their studies in the field of film archiving.

Sabrina will be heading to Haghefilm laboratory in Amsterdam, Netherlands this August, where she will begin preservation on “Kodachrome Two-Color Test Shots No. III,” (1922) an early color test made by Kodak in their quest to find a marketable method of creating color motion picture film.  Once the project is complete, she will present her work at the Pordenone Silent Film Festival in Italy this October.

Elizabeth will be spending her time at Technicolor Lab in Los Angeles, California where she will be inspecting, printing and preserving “His Baby Doll” (1917), an early slapstick comedy short starring Malcolm St. Clair.  The story concerns a young man who is ready to be married.  Finding himself in charge of a small baby during his bachelor party, he is caught in hilarious circumstances of confusion and mayhem with his fiancée and his future father-in-law.

The Motion Picture Department staff is looking forward to both of these preservation projects and wishes both Sabrina and Elisabeth their warmest wishes in their future careers in film archiving.

How many of us have a Fire Extinguisher under our kitchen sink, in the trunk of our car, or walk by one each day at work? How many of us have actually had the opportunity to pull the pin and fire off the contents?

Archivist Joe Struble practices his new Fire Fighting skills.

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One of the first meetings I attended at George Eastman House was an exhibition meeting for the community participation section of the 2006 exhibition  Why Look at Animals?

It was at this meeting that it was decided  email would be the way people gave us their photographs. It seemed like a reasonable way to do it. And it is, if the number of submissions is, say, 40, or even 100. But when you get 1,000 or more submissions, suddenly the notion of downloading 1,000 picture-laden emails, reformatting every one to conform to a common format, printing it out, and attaching it to the wall becomes daunting. Continue Reading »

One of my favorite parts of working at George Eastman House is getting to see all of the wonderful collection objects.  This may sound somewhat obvious, but until on any given day you can go and look at a megalethoscope slide, an original Kodak  Brownie camera, or the Sackville West album,  you  haven’t  discovered the meaning of the word distraction.  

That being said, I come to you today with two distractions to share.

The first, some meta-photography relating to Jessica’s post on megalethoscopes, taken by our photographer, Barbara Galasso.

Box o' megalethoscope slides ready to go.

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Install week is over and the summer shows are up and look fabulous!  It is pretty magical to see an  exhibition  take shape. There are always moments when you are sure it will never be ready in time, but hard work and a dedicated prep team ensure success. After a hectic week we finished cleaning plexi and hanging wall text just in time for a lively and well attended panel discussion and members opening reception for Nature as Artifice.  I don’t have any pictures from those events yet, but I do have some to share from the docent training sessions that took place Friday afternoon. Click here if you are interested in becoming a docent at George Eastman House.

Maarje van den Heuvel talks to docents about Nature as Artifice.

Curator, Alison Nordstrom, talks to Docents about New Topographics.