Are old negatives archival?

[Bill_1856]

Because early photographs on Daguerrotypes and glass plates have survived so well, we tend to think of old negatives as archival. However, there was a period when film began to replace glass plates, when I presume the film stock was cellulose like all those old movies which are so often shown self-destructing in their cans.
Are the great negatives of Strand, Weston, Evans, etc, made in the teens, 20s and early 30s (before safety film) in danger of crumbling to dust?

[Mark Woods]

It depends on how they were processed. If the fixer wasn't totally cleaned off the neg, that is the element that is the problem. Otherwise they are archival is stored correctly. BTW, if the negs are in good shape they can be rewashed.

[Mark Sampson]

Wilhelm isn't referring only to image deterioration due to improper processing, but the stability of the film base itself. And it's a good question, as the unstable nature and flammability of nitrate-base film is well known. So the question might be 'when did cellulose acetate "safety" film become the standard?' I'd guess that the negatives of the three photographers listed above have long been in academic or museum collections, and thus well taken care of.
A side note- per David Vestal, Alfred Steiglitz thought Kodak's processing recommendations were a greed-driven conspiracy to sell more fixer. So he seldom changed his fixer, and as a result many of his prints are fading now.

[nolindan]

The ones on nitrate and acetate stock are indeed decomposing. Glass plates are OK.

Google <archival photography acetate nitrate>

When Eastman introduced roll and sheet film professional photographers insisted the new fangled stuff would be the death of proper photography as proper photographs could only be made on glass plates. They were right ... [insert smiley as needed]

[Michael Alpert]

Bill,

An art conservator friend of mine told me that on the first day of her training she was told, "Nothing lasts forever." The statement was both depressing and reassuringly truthful. All oil paintings need "relining," replacement of vanish, and/or other measures to keep them intact. All artwork on paper is subject to whatever limitations (impurities) were built into the paper when it was made. Sculpture breaks. I am sure that the photography archives are doing what they can to preserve the important negatives that you are concerned about, and they are probably storing digital scans. I feel that the artist-approved prints matter most; the negatives are also important but in a more curatorial way. I was told by one of the curators in a very prestigious museum that he has never had anyone come in to his study room asking to see a negative by one of the most important American photographers (I am purposely leaving out names because this information was said to me in private). We would like to think that the finest works of our culture are immortal, but maybe that means that they will last for no more than a few hundred years. And there is the other very problematic side of this coin to consider: Let's hope that there are people in the future who will value the artwork that the best of our culture's artists have produced.

[Brian Ellis]

I'd guess that for every negative that has deteriorated because of problems in processing, storage, or the materials used to make the film, there must be 10,000 or more that are simply lost. I have family photographs (prints) from the 19th century forward to the 1970s that were kept by my parents. There isn't a single negative in the entire bunch. So whether they were "arichival" or not is kind of a moot point.

As an aside, the prints aren't all that "archival" either. Some look amazingly good, others have splotches of one sort or another or have faded or otherwise deteriorated. And that despite my parents' care in storing them.

[William McEwen]

A side note- per David Vestal, Alfred Steiglitz thought Kodak's processing recommendations were a greed-driven conspiracy to sell more fixer. So he seldom changed his fixer, and as a result many of his prints are fading now.

Yes, I read that in Vestal too, though I haven't been able to find any other sources for that.

BTW, Vestal says Stieglitz thought fixer lasted forever, and the evil Eastman Kodak company would stop at nothing to sell more fixer. Stieglitz told Ansel this, and advised him to reuse and reuse fixer. Ansel wisely disobeyed.

As you know, Stieglitz only had one photo student during his lifetime, Dorothy Norman. Norman took everything Stieglitz said as gospel. I've seen a few of her original prints, and they all seem to be holding up fine, so maybe Stieglitz eventually reversed his position. Norman's work is all contact prints, in adherence to Stieglitz's belief that "photography in its truest form demanded the contact print." (Bry)

OK, I'm still going somewhere with this...

Years ago I mentioned the Stieglitz fixer anectdote to Michael Smith. Michael said, "That doesn't make sense. Stieglitz was a trained chemist. He had to have known better."

After thinking about it, Michael added that (I'm paraphrasing here, and I don't remember Michael's exact words or the science) fixer will keep fixing after many uses. It's the clearing that can't take place if the fixer is old. So Stieglitz was sort of right.

(Apologies to Michael if I screwed that up.)

[AF-ULF]

A few years ago I went to an exhibit on Weston at the Center for Contemporary Photography in Arizona. One of the displays was on preservation of his negatives. They had a print made by him of C. Watson sitting under a tree. The original negative was mounted on a light box and it indeed showed much degradation. They also had a new print from the negative and it looked pretty bad. The process followed by the museum to create duplicate negatives was outlined and the duplicate negative and a new print to match the old was also shown.

Some of the old negatives are in bad shape, but the museum was taking steps to preserve and duplicate them.

[percepts]

define archival please.

[Eric Woodbury]

I don't think archival means anything in marketing. When you buy products, the words to look for are: "acid free".

As I understand it, nitrate based films may be more stable than the current products if stored properly, which mostly means at a lower temperature such as at the Library of Congress film storage in Dayton Ohio (where the alien remains were stored).

[Bill_1856]

I presume the film stock was cellulose

I should have written "Nitrate/acetate" not "cellulose." Sorry.

[Robert Hughes]

Cellulose nitrate based films oxidize over time, becoming dimensionally and chemically unstable; it is common for old nitrate movie prints to catch fire during projection, and they're all so old they don't hold registration anyway. Cellulose acetate films aren't as combustible, hence the name "safety film", but they can suffer from "vinegar syndrome", a breakdown of the film base into acetic acid. If your older prints start smelling like vinegar, wash them and make copies as soon as possible, as they are already in breakdown. Also, don't store degrading film with your known good film, as the breakdown of good film is accelerated by acetic acid vapors.

I have 16mm (safety film) home movies from the 1920's that are still in good shape, but have run across film prints from the 1970's that exhibit vinegar syndrome, so treat each case individually.

[Bob Salomon]

Bill,

An art conservator friend of mine told me that on the first day of her training she was told, "Nothing lasts forever." The statement was both depressing and reassuringly truthful. All oil paintings need "relining," replacement of vanish, and/or other measures to keep them intact. All artwork on paper is subject to whatever limitations (impurities) were built into the paper when it was made. Sculpture breaks. I am sure that the photography archives are doing what they can to preserve the important negatives that you are concerned about, and they are probably storing digital scans. I feel that the artist-approved prints matter most; the negatives are also important but in a more curatorial way. I was told by one of the curators in a very prestigious museum that he has never had anyone come in to his study room asking to see a negative by one of the most important American photographers (I am purposely leaving out names because this information was said to me in private). We would like to think that the finest works of our culture are immortal, but maybe that means that they will last for no more than a few hundred years. And there is the other very problematic side of this coin to consider: Let's hope that there are people in the future who will value the artwork that the best of our culture's artists have produced.

What does she say about cave paintings?

[Robert Hughes]

What does she say about cave paintings?
Funny guy... the paintings were done with carbon, umber, other ground-based pigments that last as long as the base materials they are placed on. Limestone lasts forever - if it's dry and not physically or chemically stressed. But as air pollution becomes omnipresent, even stone rots.