Re: Avoiding faded prints

On Mon, 29 Jan 1996 AndyBurr@xxxxxxx wrote: 

>John Weiler mentioned how many surviving views still have wonderful clarity and tone over 130 years later; I find that amazing too, especially after looking at faded b&w or magentized color from the 1950s! How'd they do it?--and how can one today avoid making the same mistakes as the 1950s photographers? I'm about to get into photography, and I don't want my efforts to be unviewable in 40 years.

The three basic words for preservation: cool, dark, dry. Store your prints in a place that has these characteristics. Closets will work just fine. Using acid free materials for storage isn't a bad idea either. Sudden shifts in humidity are particularly damaging for archival storage of just about anything, so using A/C in the summer helps out a lot.

I got a first hand llok at the power of keeping stuff in a cool dark dry place. I keep a bunch of old newspapers that I saved from when I was in HS and college back at my parents place. The newspapers sit in an upstairs closet that is rarely entered by anyone & stays cool & dry thanks to my parents suburban air conditioning reflex :) . 12 year old newsprint in that closet looks nearly brand new. By comparison, stuff that I kept in my own dark closet here in the city was noticably aged after two years of exposure to Chicago's wild summers. Until a couple of years ago, I didn't have AC & so in the summer, with the windows open most of the time, stuff in the house was exposed to every humidity shift that came by. :(

The experience of 50's color film is not really a good basis for predicting what will happen to 90's color film over a similar length of time. Color dyes (Kodachrome excluded) were generally pretty unstable back then, but lately, film companies have made strides along those lines. I don't know what the archival characteristics are of print film these days, but I almost never shoot print film either. 

Basically, if you want to be sure that you never have color dye shifts, use black and white film. Otherwise, all you can do is delay the inevitable. 

Mark Josephson "The white man ain't the devil I promise icebox@xxxxxxx	You wanna see the devil? Take a look at Clarence Thomas!"
--Boogie Down Productions, "Build to Destroy" 1994 Icebox in full effect on WHPK 88.5 FM, Chicago, 9PM-Midnite, Wednesdays 


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