AIC's 45th Annual Meeting

As everybody knows, conservation of any kind of collection is a requisite to assure its perdurability in time. However, this is not enough without an integrated management, to allow the socialization of the collection so it becomes part of the shared historic memory. Photography constitutes part of the visual and documental heritage of a country. This specific technique, relevant by its objectivity, historic and cultural values, chronicles the human experience with an expressive and comprehensive message, through the visual record of a cultural identity. The mission of the Photo Archive of the Office of the Historian of Havana (OHCH), founded in 1993, is to protect the graphic memory contained in its collections. Its holdings include more than 180,000 objects, including images and technological devices used to produce those images. They comprise the majority of photographic processes. This extensive archive represents the fact that Cuba was the first country in the Americas where photography was practiced and the first one to commercialize this form of art. This justifies the creation of a center that would become leader in conservation of photographs in the country, studying its evolution since it came to Cuba. The strategic proposal for the center, formulated by the author, is to display photographic collections (resultant image) and the technological devices to obtain them, as they relate each other. The integral management of these collections requires specific studies to obtain, not only a consistent museological proposal, but also develop conservation policies, to formulate a methodology for the conservation treatment of photographic collections and display of the collection.