Mark, We appreciate your efforts and FWIW I have been a small yearly donator-a very worthy thing to do with a few extra bucks every year.
Mark, We appreciate your efforts and FWIW I have been a small yearly donator-a very worthy thing to do with a few extra bucks every year.
Thanks,
Kirk
at age 73:
"The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep"
Originally Posted by Sal Santamaura
Please understand that nothing I wrote was intended to suggest your work is without value. It's just that I still believe our society can and should make "ivory tower" endeavors happen. It did in the past and could, if the will existed, again.
On the other hand, I also posted this earlier in the thread:
...Clearly...I'm just as out of step with the rest of the world on this matter as on most other subjects....
It seems to me that MHMG is doing his very best to build one.
OK, I've been dancing around the politics prohibition. When I wrote "society" I meant government.
Mark is obviously doing the best he can, but even he acknowledges his project isn't the fully funded, independent institutional research I would like to see, calling that "ivory tower."
Sal, I do understand what you are saying, but you have a lot more idealism about government service than I do. In the interest of full disclosure, I was once a Federal US employee. I served as the Senior Research Photographic Scientist at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington for 10 years. It was a fantastic experience, and I really enjoyed my work and my time there. I am very proud of the conservation science I was able to accomplish while essentially being paid by the American taxpayer (The SI is about 20% trust funded, 80% taxpayer funded). However, I would not have been allowed by my superiors to conduct the kind of research I'm now doing at Aardenburg Imaging & Archives. I'm also somehow strangely more personally connected to the research I'm doing today, even though the pay sucks and it's a classic example of no good deed going unpunished
Gotta tend to some test samples now...
later,
Mark
Oren's points are all valid, and echo what's frequently reported by curators and conservators. Some silver prints have lasted over a hundred years with very little change, others have degenerated within a few decades.
Unfortunately there hasn't been much scientific investigation into the disparities. The obvious culprit would be residual thiosulfate or silver ions, but this often isn't the case. It may come down to idiosyncrasies with certain brands and types of paper. If this is the case, we are in no more able to predict longevity with silver papers than with ink papers, because there is no paper available today that was available a hundred years ago.
Actually, there have been mountains of research on the traditional silver gelatin print, and photo conservators understand a great deal about the degradation factors. Many of the "bad actors" we see today were poorly processed and it's relatively easy to identify these prints. But what about the well-processed prints? Well, we also know that another inherent weakness is related to the glass transition temperature (Tg) of gelatin. Unlike many other polymers, the Tg of gelatin varies with moisture content. The Tg is where the gelatin switches from hard dry polymer to rubbery gel state. This property is what makes photographic processing possible, but it's also a double edged sword because it also means the image bearing gelatin will always remain highly vulnerable to high humidity conditions that frequently occur in the real world. At typical room temperature gelatin's Tg is crossed at about 75%RH. Under these gel state conditions, silver gelatin prints can "ferrotype" and stick to other surfaces (e.g., in a picture frame without a mat board spacer), and the silver particles are prone to oxidation-reduction reactions that lead to the classic silver tarnish problem often called "silver mirroring". Lastly, we know a great deal about the physical properties of gelatin when subjected to strong humidity cycling over the years. As the humidity cycle goes from high to low, the gelatin shrinks and the restrained image bearing gelatin goes under very high mechanical stress that eventually leads to severe cracking and flaking. Collectors can therefore take steps to ensure that high humidity and strong humidity cycling don't occur, and under these more benign conditions gelatin is a very durable polymer. BTW, we've learned about these degradation pathways through accelerated testing then comparing to real world experience. If this were not the case, I wouldn't continue to do the research I do on modern imaging materials.
What photo conservators know much less about is appropriate physical and chemical restoration techniques for those poorly processed or cracked and flaking prints that are low risk (ie., do no further harm) and ideally reversible if the results don't come out as expected. On that score, I'd agree with you. We have a lot more to learn. That said, a majority of people regard only the information content not the tactile or aesthetic properties of photographs to be of historic importance, thus digital image enhancement of degraded images is a viable approach to image "restoration" in many instances.
No, Sal. I got that. I know what you mean when you say "ivory tower." But, inherent in that, is the ideal. If, for example, a perfect scenario were possible apart from government, then why would you care? Again, IF. So, I give all the credit in the world to Mark, and since he is open and honest about where the shortcomings are in his attempts to keep any possibility for bias out, he is, essentially, getting right back to that unbiased position he yearns for.
And you, I think, have waaaaaay to much confidence in the ability of the government to be an unbiased entity. That is, precisely, what government will never be, in my opinion, where employment is determined by keeping the right people happy; people who have their own special interests to keep other people happy, and so on, and so on.
While I agree with your conclusion, I think you greatly overestimate the ubiquity of malicious corruption. There will always be willful corruption in human endeavors, and it really doesn't matter which batch of humans one might be considering. But most government employees are trying to do the right thing within the context of the possible, as they see it. If there is an inherent bias in government, it's that the context of the possible will seem limited to those who are subject to political and organizational pressure but who have little or no control over it. That statement does not imply evil masterminds exerting such pressure. The bias can occur when everyone is trying to do the right thing.
But government cannot be in the business of recommending products (or, more particularly, recommending against them). Nothing will get a government employee in hot water with elected officials faster than saying Product X is of lesser quality than Product Y. What government can do is work towards uniform standards of measurement and evaluation, so that consumers (at whatever level in the commercial chain) can make a reasonable evaluation for themselves, or at least know how to evaluate the recommendations of third parties.
Those uniform standards, however, will always be behind the technology front, and will be quite conservatively rendered, in some cases to the point of stifling innovation (and certainly subject to that accusation). Overt creativity upsets the balance of an organization's culture as much in government as in large private-sector organizations (which in some ways are worse).
This is not a political issue and the above applies to all political and economic systems. Arguing which is better or worse is what should be considered a political statement that is banned on this forum.
The answer is not who does these evaluations, but rather how they are done. Or, more specifically, how openly they are done. Transparency and sunlight are the sure preventative for corruption, intentional or otherwise. That does not mean that everyone participates in every effort--that would lead to getting nothing done. It does mean that efforts are clearly described--clearly enough to be tested for repeatability. Scientific conclusions have always been supported by independent repeatability.
We constantly get hung up on who does stuff, which paints people into two camps: The good guys who always display integrity and can do no wrong, and the bad guys who are always motivated by selfishness and evil. The first group are trusted absolutely until they make the slightest misstep (however that is defined, usually after the fact), and then they are immediately thrown into the second camp. And the second camp comprises everyone who is not willing to fall on their swords for every minor point of integrity (however that is defined, usually after the fact). This hang-up is one of the main reasons people in large organizations and government tend to be uncreative; the rules get defined after the fact, and what seems a reasonable approach at the time, given all points of view, gets them thumped when seen with hindsight. And the cliche that hindsight is 20/20 is abjectly false.
Again, this is not political. This is human nature. The bias comes when people must go to constraining lengths to protect themselves from being punished for doing what a reasonable person in the situation would think is the right thing. It happens often enough so that such protection is not without justification. But this bias is real: It often makes people afraid to speak the obvious truth. This happens everywhere, and certainly not just in government. And people willing to take risks rise above it everywhere, and certainly not just in the private sector. And vice versa.
Rick "not inexperienced in these matters" Denney
The issue I raised does relate to how evaluations are done, but "how" is a direct consequence of who does them. Specifically, I contended that only an appropriate government entity like the LOC has / should have the virtually unlimited resources (compared to private non-profits) necessary for performing evaluations on all relevant characteristics over a full spectrum of conditions.
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