Mervat Guirguis Abdallah, freelancer restorer.

HISTORY AND PRESERVATION OF GIOVANNI FASANI PHOTOGRAPHIC COLLECTION

Egypt applied the new born art of photography in the same year of its invention (The Daguerreotypes (1839) encouraged by it' s Ruler Muhammad Ali who ruled between (1805- 1849) and gave a special attention and care as he always did with all new techniques and so did his successors. . Here we focus our speech on the collection an the Italian photographer Giovanni Fasani, who was actives for 40 years between 1890 to 1930and opened his studio in El Mousky then behind Mena House hotel, few steps from the pyramids. The collection consists of 1000 gelatin dry plate negatives (glass negatives), large positive glass plate used in the vitrine of the shop as advertisements (specially, in Mena house hotel) lantern slides, stereoscopic views, 50 Polyester safety sheet Film, 100 original photographs print, and 50 post cards. aims mainly to study the collection in terms of historical background, structure and state of preservation, focusing on the challenges of organizing, preserving and digitizing 360 plates from the collection. We aim here to present our work of preservation where we followed the general protocols for photographic preservation which are institutionally based and developed. And to relate the story of the photographer and his work applying the standards on this private collection.