Telling a story with photos: ceramics conservation for Before Egypt

An artefact isn’t just an artefact. It has two lives; two histories.

Its first life is its original history: where and when it was made, what its use was and who used it (its provenance). Its second history lies with us in the modern age: what happened to it after it was rediscovered and made its way into a museum collection.

When I photograph an artefact, I’m only telling part of its story. That’s why the artefact photography is just one aspect of what I do. The other is documentary photography.

Unlike my artefact photography, which is carefully controlled and thought out, documentary photography is about working with what you’ve got, and reacting to the moment. Your environment dictates the photography, rather than the photography dictating the environment.

There are two main branches of documentary photography I use to tell stories. One is the pure documentary stuff;  the candid photography you do out-and-about in the museum gallery, at heritage sites or at an event. This kind of photography allows me to tell the story of how people today interact with the heritage and history around them.

The other is what’s known as environmental portraiture.

What is environmental portraiture?

Environmental portraiture, simply put, is about photographing a person in their ‘natural’ environment, rather than putting them in a photographer’s studio. It tells a story about that person. About their work or hobby.

It’s photographing a chef cooking in their kitchen, or a climber out on a rock face. It can be a musician performing on stage, or an archaeologist working on their dig.

Environmental portraiture can be posed or unposed. It can be a single photo or a series of pictures (a photo essay), but the end goal is the same: you’re telling a visual story about a person in that particular aspect of their life and the skills they have.

When I use this style of photography, I can intertwine the stories of objects from the past with the lives of people today, be it curators, archaeologists and conservators working with artefacts, or experimental archaeologists working to recreate ancient practices and skills.

It’s this story we wanted to tell about the conservation work done on some of the pots included in the Before Egypt exhibition.

Conservation: the unsung heros of heritage and museum-work

The work of the conservator is paramount in archaeology and heritage. And yet – as far as I can see – their work often goes unnoticed.

We (rightly) applaud curators for their exhibitions and archaeologists for their work in revealing ancient sites. But, without the conservators, much of our collections would crumble away into the mists of time.

For this reason, we wanted to take you ‘behind-the-scenes’ for a moment. We wanted to introduce you to the conservators and show you this work they’ve been doing for the Before Egypt exhibition.

So, I went out to Edge Conservation, who are ceramics specialists, for a couple of days, to photograph them working on the vessels.

It was such fun!

Lynne and Anna were lovely, and they were describing what they were doing as they were working. I learned an awful lot!

I learnt about matching the strength of your adhesive to the strength of your material; about consolidating edges before applying the adhesive; about using plaster infill to strengthen the vessel; and about cleaning up around old repairs. I also learnt that broken ceramic pieces can warp, so matching pieces up and making sure everything’s realigned properly can be more time-consuming and detailed than you’d think. Especially when dealing with decorated ware.

I learnt that although a lot of their equipment is very specialist, there’s also a few things you might find at home such as cling film, masking tape and nail files. And, apparently, dental wax is great for creating a base for your infill!

I also learnt that conservation’s a long process. There’s an awful lot of time spent waiting for things to dry, so the conservators may work on several projects at once. It can take days and days to put one pot back together.

Conservation work is where science and art meet. You need to know about solvents, adhesives, organic and inorganic materials and how it all works together. But, there’s a real art to it, too, such as creating, shaping and moulding the infill to match the shape of the vessel.

I’m in complete awe of the work they do!

Photographing the conservators

Because this photography was about telling the story of the conservation of the pots, we decided to mostly focus in closely on hands, rather than posing the conservators in a portrait-style shoot. Because of the nature of the work – the careful, delicate work, and the relatively small space – I didn’t want to interfere with extra lighting or posing; I just photographed them while they were working, which is how I like it anyway. Non-posed, natural shots tell you more about the work of a conservationist than post shots will.

And here are two of the finished pots. This first one is the large d-ware (‘decorated’ ware) pot in several of the photos. It’s that amazing, immediately recognisable style we associate with the Predynastic period. Some of the old repairs remain in places, being strong enough to not need redoing.

Before:

After:

This ripple-burnished bowl is the bowl you can see with the pink dental wax in the photos, and in the final photo drying (no ‘before’ photo for this one … I came in after they’d started on it).

Lynne and Anna have done an amazing job reconstructing these pots. I have such admiration for the skill it takes to do work like this.

And that’s why I love to bring these stories to you. To show you the journey these pieces go through, so they can sit proud in a case for you to enjoy, and the expertise it takes to get them there.

It’s not just about where they came from, but about their place in our lives too.

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With gratitude and love,

Julia

Unless otherwise credited, all photos in this post are © Julia Thorne. If you’d like to use any of my photos in a lecture, presentation or blog post, please don’t just take them; drop me an email via my contact page. If you share them on social media, please link back to this site or to one of my social media accounts. Thanks!