City of Rochester
News Release
(June 8, 2009) - Mayor Robert J. Duffy joined Taylor Whitney for the grand opening and ribbon cutting ceremony of Preserving The Past, located at 2290 East Avenue.
Preserving The Past (www.preservethepast.com) is a service-oriented business specializing in the preservation, digitization and cold storage of private, corporate, institutional and fine art photographic and film collections.
The move to East Avenue in June 2008 has allowed Preserving The Past to hire a part-time bookkeeper, an accountant, a freelance editor, a photo conservator and to collaborate extensively with local labs. As business increases, the hope is to hire graphic designers, archivists, and other employees.
“I am delighted that Taylor Whitney has chosen an area just a few minutes from Rochester’s downtown for her business’ new home,” Mayor Duffy said. “I am confident she will find those highly-skilled workers right here in the city where film began. I would like to congratulate Ms. Whitney on her new venture and wish for her continued success."
Whitney, President and Founder of Preserving The Past, hopes to attract resources from the retired Kodak employee pool as well as the Selznick School of Film Preservation and the Photographic Preservation and Collections Management Program, both at George Eastman House and RIT’s School of Film and Animation.
Preserving The Past specializes in traditional preservation via protection of original artifacts from harmful environmental elements, digitization of photographic for access and film collections and cold storage which offers long-term permanence. Additionally, PTP has a division called Home-Movie-Classics (www.home-movie-classics.com), which helps produce new home movies or film productions, as well as recreate old ones.
“Home movies and snapshots or family portraits are equally as historically significant as Hollywood blockbusters and fine art photographs. Film was born in Rochester, which makes Rochester the rightful place for its preservation, resurrection and rest,” Whitney said.
The company was established in 1997 in Los Angeles, Calif. Whitney relocated to Rochester in 2005 to study at the George Eastman House, and decided this was a great city – “the image city” – for her company.
Whitney has a background in film preservation. She worked at a film library specializing in Hollywood history and at a cold storage/film preservation facility in Hollywood for several years. She recently earned a Master of Arts in Photographic Preservation and Collections Management from Ryerson University in Toronto and at the George Eastman House.
Within the next three years Preserving The Past hopes to expand its facilities to include cold storage vaults.
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News Media: For more information, contact Kamahria Hopkins at 428-6678, or Taylor Whitney at 271-4774.