Winter 2023

Coincidently, an all-woman team is involved
in this multi-faceted endeavour and Restoration
Conversations had the opportunity to talk with
two of its players, in addition to Dr Baroncini. For
several months, Pamela Ferrari, head of digital
acquisitions at the Florence-based company
Centrica, set up ‘shop’ at Art Defender, a vast,
high-security art vault in Calenzano, where a
plethora of Florence museums and institutions,
including FAF, hold their most precious instorage
works. Ferrari describes her work in
lay terms, “We created a photographic set up
on site, fitted with a 100-megapixel camera to
acquire 5,200 Wulz negatives, through retroillumination
using a lit panel.”
Right. The reasoning behind the project and
the basics of its execution sounded simple
enough so far. We were ready to speak with
photography restorer Eugenia Di Rocco, and
zero in on what she and the ‘5,000 negatives’
team have learned about the Wulz’s process.
Aboe: Wanda and Marion Wulz photographed as children by their father Carlo
We know the Wulz sisters – particularly
Wanda – frequently manipulated negatives
to achieve ‘futuristic effects’ like movement,
or used overlay with very successful
results. Were the Wulzs pioneers as far as
image editing is concerned?
Eugenia di Rocco: The Wulz sisters worked
largely with portraiture and heavily modified
their photographs in the post-production phase.
They were not the only photographers to do so,
of course. For the whole of the 1900’s, prior to the
advent of digital equipment, dry-plate negatives
were altered by adding varnishes, temperas
and graphite. The Wulzs would add or subtract
elements to and from their images, applying cutout
silhouettes in black or red paper to areas
they wanted to cover. They would also ‘make
38 Restoration Conversations • Winter 2023