Audit et conseil en stratégieTalent Story No. 5
“I have the privilege of photographing documents that have never been handled in the 21st century”
Turning a hobby into a job
Yes, Stéphanie Cousin has turned her passion into her profession! The professional photographer began her career snapping photos in specialist studios before moving to a photo service company where she was team manager for a decade or so.
In 2017, however, on the look-out for new opportunities, Stéphanie responded to an Arkhênum advertisement for a photographer.
Stéphanie joined the book digitisation department before quickly moving to the iconography workshop, where she digitised “iconographic documents that need to be in a very high resolution”, including slides, negatives, postcards and even glass plates. “Working with images has always been a source of inspiration to me and something I’ve found thrilling,” she says.
“At Arkhênum I’m privileged to work with documents that have not been handled for decades, sometimes centuries. They’ve been in the archives for years and years, and I am the first to discover them in the present day. It’s painstaking work that helps bring history to light.”
Photographer
“A role that guarantees quality”
When handling media, especially negatives, Stéphanie must be extremely vigilant. It’s her responsibility to spot the slightest error or missing document and report the information to her manager who then informs the client.
Stéphanie enjoys adding variety to her work, and she also helps optimise the files resulting from the digitisation process.
“We go back over the framing and colours, upgrading the image to eliminate any damage that has accrued over time,” she explains. “Our goal never changes: to promote every item in a collection as much as possible.”
Recently, as part of a project for the Fondation des Gueules Cassées (the Foundation of Broken Faces), Stéphanie helped optimise the digital images of glass plates from the First World War. “Revealing the facial injuries – the literal broken faces – of the war veterans before and after surgery was particularly moving,” confesses Stéphanie, for whom Arkhênum’s new slogan, Revealing the Past has particular meaning. “In photography, the developer or developing solution is the product that reveals the image.”
What motivates Stéphanie in her day-to-day work?
Every page turned is an archived story
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