The Restoration of Bettina Rheims’s Early Prints

How can you restore damaged photographic prints without compromising the original work? 

This video documents the conservation and restoration work on Bettina Rheims’s gelatin-silver prints, carried out by Lucille Bonnier in collaboration with the Institut pour la photographie. Through demonstrations, analyses, and archival images, she explores the challenges of photographic restoration, the memory of the works, and their transmission, with contributions from Gabrielle de la Selle, curator of the photographic archives at the Institut pour la photographie.

The Institut pour la photographie preserves, studies, and promotes photographic collections, and supports research, restoration, and outreach projects related to the image.

↘︎ Production : Déroute videos 

↘︎ Music : Borrtex, Nadir Demir 

↘︎ Coordination : Victor Pacula