How long do silver gelatin prints last?

[Darren Kruger]

wouldn't the silver rust over time in fiber paper?

I believe silver will tarnish the same on RC or fiber paper. The silver is in the gelatin coating on top of the paper and not in the paper itself.

From what I remember, selenium toning puts a thin layer of selenium on top of the silver in a print protecting it from the environment. The selenium doesn't protect the paper.

-Darren

[PViapiano]

Wash RC for at least 5 minutes...the package will tell you.

And don't use hot water, just cold tap water (thereabouts 65-68 degrees F)...one fellow used hot water, just like he was going to wash dishes, and wrecked the emulsion. Same with film, no hot water washes...

[cotdt]

1) Silver won't rust -- rust is iron oxide. There is likely little iron in your print, but if you see reddish stains over time you'll know what it is.

but i've seen silver coins that are tarnished and yucky brown. isn't it similar to rust? would it be better to use gold toner as gold does not tarnish?

2) While silver gelatin photo papers were available from around 1880, they didn't really take off until around 1910 or a little later. This is because prior to that most prints were contact prints made from glass plate negatives. That is, there was little demand for enlarging, where the considerably more sensitive silver halide papers offer performance that wasn't available anywhere else at the time. What I'm saying is, there's good odds that the print from the 190x time frame is actually a platinum print contact printed from a glass plate negative. Especially if it's a portrait -- platinum did and still does make for an excellent portrait paper.

Cool! Platinum prints sound interesting, maybe the old family portrait is a platinum. How do I tell?

3) Please, for the rest of us, learn to use your "shift" key. It's a lot easier to read if you'll just make that little bit of effort to follow standard capitalizations. Sorry, getting cranky at the end of a long week.

Sorry, young people like myself have these lazy habits.

[cotdt]

I believe silver will tarnish the same on RC or fiber paper. The silver is in the gelatin coating on top of the paper and not in the paper itself.

From what I remember, selenium toning puts a thin layer of selenium on top of the silver in a print protecting it from the environment. The selenium doesn't protect the paper.

I don't like how Selenium toning changes the original contast. Wouldn't gold toning be better?

[Nathan Potter]

Metallic silver left in the emulsion of printing papers after processing chemically degrades in the presence of sulfer to silver sulfide. For print longevity store unmounted prints in archival storage containers that are manufactured with acid free materials. Mounted prints must be affixed using archival adhesive on archival mounting board. As mentioned above wash prints per processing instructions - I use 10 minutes with filtered water at 68 degrees F. Use hypo clearing agent for 2 minutes as a routine. Finally use selenium of gold toning for extended permanence if you really want longevity - and you'll have to put up with the toning cast. If you really want permanence learn the platinnum/palladium process. And if you are a fanatic store your prints in airtight containers with an argon purge.

Nate Potter, Austin TX.

[David A. Goldfarb]

Fading example: Here is a 100 year old photograph from my collection. Someday I expect the photograph to vanish completely.

Cards like that produced between about 1860 and 1900 are often albumen prints, so they have their own special issues. Albumen is much more prone to swelling than gelatin silver, so old albumen prints almost always have extensive surface cracks visible under magnification, and increased cracking allows more pollutants to attack the emulsion.

[MIke Sherck]

If you're going to let small children play with your prints, the length of the wash becomes irrelevant. Do you supply crayons to draw on them as well?

Great, there goes another promising MFA thesis, just thrown out into the gallery world before someone can use it! Won't someone think of the students?



Mike

[tim atherton]

It's hard to tell how long they will last. For a lot of photographic papers past and present the substrate is probably the big unknown - we have little or no information on it over the history of manufactured papers - right up to the present.

Some papers do well some don't, from across a range of periods and products (and even the same product).

I was dealing with some 19th and early twentieth century prints today (of a variety of different types and printing processes).

Apart from a couple of tears and a little curling, one from 1879 looked great (an interesting panoramic of a large herd of buffalo on the Alberta prairie). Others, from 20 or 30 years later or so were in a variety of different conditions from good to awful.

There was also a silver gelatin FB 1970's print where the substrate was clearly acidic and had also cracked, causing the gelatin layer to crack and discolour.

The manufacturers provided (and still provide) little information on what types of paper they used/use; when the same paper changed substrates (as most papers have done several times during their life); and what quality it was - at times the quality was excellent with regard to longevity and preservation, at other times it was terrible - even within the same brand and type of paper.

The big manufacturers have not been forthcoming with any of this kind of information. The Getty Research Institute, which is a world leader in this and working on a major photographic materials project, is having to seek out samples of all the papers to study and build a data bank for future conservation work in collections. (They are doing the same with film - they couldn't even get samples of some of the more recently discontinued films from the manufacturers, never mind anything somewhat older - they either didn't keep any or wouldn't share them)

[tim atherton]

A second issue with photographic papers in more recent times is the use of OBA's in the papers - both FB and RC - and the various changes that take place as those degrade - changing tone, apparent contrast etc. This usually happens within the first ten to twenty years or so of a print's life.

Again, we don't know without testing which papers do and which don't have OBA's in them (the majority seem to, as I recall)

[cotdt]

in general, if we wanted the print to really last a long time, what can we do about it? the really old prints i have (some over 100 years old) use papers which seem to be falling apart but the actual print seems to still be excellent. i don't know if they are silver gelatin or some alternative process, though.

i'm sure modern papers are tougher than the older ones.