Photographic image from the moment when the technology was invented, how to capture, has become an important personal and collective history, documentation, communication and artistic expression. Sophisticated digital technology drove expensive and far more time and requires knowledge of photochemical photography production process became muzealija, research and knowledge of the subject.
Photographic heritage constitutes a significant part of the visual heritage protected by museums, archives and other institutions, which does not lose its relevance and public interest. The variety of old photographic technologies when it comes to researching and describing them creates a number of difficulties for researchers, and the impermanence of photographic material requires enormous efforts, practical and theoretical experience to preserve it.

Wishing to consolidate the heritage institutions in order to address the most complex problems of photographic legacy preservation and to encourage an official dialogue as well as best practice sharing between diverse professionals, the Photography Museum (Vilniaus st. 140, Šiauliai, Lithuania) is holding the International Symposium on Old Photography Techniques. It is an opportunity for Lithuanian and foreign photography researchers, museum workers, archivists, restorers, and practitioners of old photography techniques to share their knowledge. The Symposium consists of two parts – the conference and the workshop. The conference is dedicated to an overview of the old photography processes and their history; the presentation of photography collections stored by various establishments; and the review of research and preservation problems as well as the challenges of materials’ adaptation and use in the present day.

2019 Symposium website

The Photography Museum is the only specialized museum of the art and equipment of photography in Lithuania. It also serves as a multifunctional centre of photography and the storage and exhibition place for the Lithuanian visual heritage, photography equipment, publications, and documents, constituting a collection of nearly 150,000 exhibits and museum valuables. The Museum, modernised in 2014, holds contemporary and historic exhibitions of Lithuanian and foreign photographers, meetings with the artists and photography researches, educational programmes, and other diverse, modern, and innovative educational and recreational activities.