From USA to Latin America: H.G. Olds Photo Archive

Dear Donors,

We hope this message finds you well at the beginning of the new year. We would like to inform you that there was a brief delay in our previous report, and that this update includes information covering the past six months. Thanks to the dedicated work of our team, we successfully closed 2025 having met all of our objectives. Below is a summary of our recent activities and achievements.

We were awarded one of the most prestigious archival grants in the world through the British Library’s Endangered Archives Programme. The selected project, “Preservation and Digitisation of César Sánchez Bonifato’s Photographic Archives (1882–1946): Indigenous Culture and Immigration across Latin America and Europe (EAP1738)”, is currently underway, and the processes of digitisation and archival description have already begun.

https://eap.bl.uk/project/EAP1738 

We also conducted two analogue photography laboratory workshops, one focused on black-and-white photography and the other on colour photography. Both workshops reached full capacity.

In addition, we received donations of two significant photographic fonds: “Fondo Beatriz Catalina Centrangolo de Galacho” and “Fondo Aldo Frongia”. Preventive conservation has already been carried out, and the materials are now safely housed in our climate-controlled vault. Through this work, we continue to strengthen our position as one of the leading photographic archives in South America, preserving approximately two million photographic documents dating from the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries.

We have also successfully completed the grant awarded by the UCLA Library, following two years of work on the Alejandro C. del Conte Archive. Today, this collection—belonging to one of the most important figures of early- and mid-twentieth-century Latin American photography—is freely and openly accessible worldwide. This archive, once discarded, was rescued and preserved by Fundación CIFHA.

https://digital.library.ucla.edu/catalog?f%5Bmember_of_collections_ssim%5D%5B%5D=Alejandro+C.+del+Conte+Collection+%28Argentina%29

During this period, we concluded the exhibition “Reportero Gráfico”, featuring the first solo exhibition of Silvio Zuccheri, and inaugurated “Biyina Klappenbach. The Body Creates the Image”, showcasing photographs by Anatole Saderman. In conjunction with this exhibition, we hosted a public conversation on the remarkable figure of Klappenbach—an Argentine avant-garde artist and great-granddaughter of Bartolomé Mitre—with Alejandra Uslenghi (Northwestern University, Chicago), Julieta Pestarino (Curator of Latin American Photography at the Getty Museum), and Alicia Sanguinetti (photographer and conservator of the AnneMarie Heinrich Archive).

Finally, we organized a 35 mm film screening, free of charge, for children and young people from the La Boca neighbourhood. This initiative was guided by the belief that access to high-quality artistic experiences should also reach underserved communities, contributing to visual education and cultural inclusion.

From Fundación CIFHA, we would like to express our sincere gratitude to all the institutions and organizations that place their trust in us, as well as to the individuals who support and collaborate through donations. Your commitment enables us to continue, week after week, the work of preserving and disseminating photographic collections, ensuring their free and open access both in Argentina and internationally. Through this work, we foster contemporary artistic practice and strengthen the global recognition of Argentine photography.

With our deepest thanks,

Fundación CIFHA

Links:

• http://www.cifha.org.ar
• https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centro_de_Investigacion_Fotografico_Historico_Argentino

Dear donors,

On this occasion we are pleased to share with you our work in the last three months and what were the objectives achieved, thanks also to the generous support we received. This is a brief summary of our activities:

In January we worked on planning for 2025 and applied to the British Library's Endangered Archives Program, in which we were selected. 

Workshops and educational initiatives: we successfully carried out another color analogical laboratory workshop, which was very well received by the students. In this way we continue to open the doors of our La Boca headquarters to amateurs, students and professionals of photography, so that they can deepen their knowledge.

From Fundación CIFHA we would like to thank all the institutions and organizations that trust us and support us, as well as the people who help and collaborate through donations so that we can continue to carry out week after week the tasks of preservation and dissemination of the collections and photographic holdings of our collection, and make possible their free and open access in our country and the world. In this way, we encourage contemporary artistic practice and strengthen the recognition of Argentine photography in the rest of the continents.

We invite you to learn more about our project and the impact of your support by visiting our GlobalGiving page.

Thank you for your continued generosity.

Sincerely,

The CIFHA Foundation Team.