Spazi interdisciplinari e pratiche sostenibili per l’analisi e la conservazione dei negativi del fondo Wilhelm von Gloeden - Fondazione Alinari per la Fotografia

Photographic objects display a heterogeneous and complex nature that calls for an interdisciplinary approach combining historical research, material analysis, and theoretical reflection. The study of Wilhelm von Gloeden’s photographic negatives preserved at the Alinari Foundation for Photography—hitherto unexamined—has made it possible to contribute to the philological reconstruction of the photographer’s artistic career, to reassess the originality of his vision, and to test a low-impact, non-invasive methodology for the study of photographic collections. The research was structured in two main phases. The first involved a survey of both contemporary and modern sources, which yielded new biographical insights and identified iconographic connections extending from post-Romanticism to Symbolism, Pictorialism, Orientalism, and the Freikörperkultur movement, together with reflections on the reception and circulation of Gloeden’s photographic work. The second phase focused on the material analysis of negatives on glass, paper, and film, reconstructing the artist-photographer’s modus operandi and comparing it with practices described in the photographic literature of his time. Finally, the study addressed the conservation issues of the collection, adopting a critical and sustainability-oriented approach to restoration. Non-invasive analysis—carried out through spectroscopic and imaging techniques on a selection of plates transported to the Opificio delle Pietre Dure in Florence for conservation—enabled the evaluation of both the potential and the limitations of such diagnostic methodologies when applied to historicized photographs.