Tarnish slowly engulfs one of the oldest objects in MoMA's collection, an 1842 daguerreotype that captures two separate images: the Arch of Septimius Severus and the Capitoline Lion in the Roman Forum. Within two years of the invention of photography, Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey, a French aristocrat, assembled a team to travel the Mediterranean and take more than a thousand images of the region's cities, people, and ruins. These early daguerreotypes projected images directly onto silver plates, like a mirror pressing a reflection onto the polished surface. Like Polaroids, they were unique photographic objects that offered no easy method of replication.

In our second episode of Conservation Stories, Lee Ann Daffner, MoMA's Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Conservator, explores the delicate chemistry of removing tarnish from early photographic images. “There is a real art and science to cleaning,” Daffner explains. “Not only do you have to know the systems, materials and types of deterioration, but you also have to know when to stop.”

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