Lecture 40 - Elena Bulat

Elena Bulat, Senior Photograph Conservator, Weissman Preservation Center, Harvard University

Overview

This presentation focuses on the conservation challenges and opportunities presented by a mammoth plate daguerreotype of American stage actor Edwin Forrest from the Theatre Collection at Houghton Library, Harvard University. Although mammoth daguerreotypes are very rare, the Theatre Collection has two of these photographs, both depicting the same person- the famous American actor Edwin Forrest. The daguerreotypes have no attribution or provenance. One of these two daguerreotypes had very compromised condition that required some level of engineering and creative thinking.

About the speaker

Elena Bulat is a senior photograph conservator for special collections at the Weissman Preservation Center, Harvard Library. Elena came to Harvard in 2007 from The George Eastman Museum in Rochester, NY where she served as a paper and photograph conservator. From 2001 to 2003 Elena was an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow at the Advanced Residency Program in Photograph Conservation at George Eastman Museum and the Image Permanence Institute at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Prior to that Elena finished a one-year certificate program in Photograph Preservation at The George Eastman Museum in 1999. Before her professional experience in the United States, Elena worked as a paper and photograph conservator at the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia.