I went on an amazing trip to China for several weeks in December/January with my 4x5. When I returned, I had a voicemail from my landlord that the apartment upstairs (3rd floor) had a pipe burst the day after I left. All three floors of the apartment building flooded! Somehow, miraculously, the waterfalls that ran down my walls missed most of my stuff and everything survived relatively unscathed -- although I'm still cleaning it all up. The apartment downstairs was not as lucky. My neighbor had lots of photography monographs ruined -- Koudelka, Kawauchi... Painful. The water had run right over her bookshelf.
I realized that I could replace most everything in my apartment but I couldn't replace my negatives. I've since thought about storing them in waterproof boxes, and that lead me to consider storing them in fireproof boxes. Funny how it never before occurred to me to plan for a flood or a fire. I know there was a previous thread about this but I'm hoping to renew this topic in case there are some new insights. What kinds of solutions have you all come up with?
I'm also wondering about any archival issues in storing negatives in an airtight container. I currently store my negatives in PrintFile sleeves in an archival box binder on a bookshelf. Luckily, the negatives were at the opposite end of my railroad apartment from the flooding.
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