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“Over the past 20 years, photography archivists and preservationists have discovered, to their consternation and dismay, that huge swathes of the pictures taken over the past 100 years– the century of photography– are disintegrating, undergoing a spontaneous chemical decomposition that will, if left unchecked, render most of them unintelligible and unusable within the next 20 to 50 years.” -The Washington Post Magazine May 18th, 2003 | ||||||||
Unfortunately, the longevity of most photographic prints made from the turn of the century until the mid-1990’s is terrible. Family pictures, particularly color ones, will often significantly degrade within 15 years, even when stored in a cool, dry, dark, airtight container with archival, acid-free materials. Short of freezing them to below 0° F in special low-humidity freezers, no one knows of a way to stop this deterioration. Matte black and white prints are the only medium commonly used from the turn of the twentieth century until the 1990’s that will last even 20 years. The chemicals in the underlying paper of glossy black and white prints breaks down into vinegar, causing the material to shrink. The emulsion (the thin layer on top of the paper that carries the image) will crack, bunch up, and even peel off the paper. The paper on color prints, matte or glossy, will fade to yellow. Under even moderate light exposure, most color prints will fade dramatically to red in only a few years. Under heat or humidity, color and black and white prints can curl and wrinkle. Like all of the color prints from the 1940’s and 1950’s, it’s likely that nearly every photograph you own will be badly damaged within 40 years of the time it was taken, many much sooner. | ||||||||
“We have roughly a century of black-and-white film to cope with, and all the color shot since World War II. [It’s a] serious emergency for society at large.” - Jim Reilly, director of the Image Permanence Institute at the Rochester Institute of Technology. | ||||||||
Even the original slides or negatives may be fading fast. Most slides and negatives degrade almost as quickly as prints. A recent project on slides found that nearly ever Kodak Ektachrome slide over 10 years old, even under proper storage conditions, had faded entirely to red. Many people think entering the digital age automatically exempts their current pictures from meeting this fate. In reality, digital images are subject to many challenging longevity issues. A hard drive crash can wipe out an entire image collection in an instant. CD’s degrade and many will be unreadable in 10 to 50 years. Most inkjet prints fade even more quickly than photographic prints. Some are worthless in as little as a year, and many will fade within 10 years. Additionally, many inkjet prints have been found to react with chemicals in the atmosphere, causing a sever “oranging” effect. Without professional help, it is difficult to be confident that any commonly available medium will survive for even one generation. | ||||||||
[With Kodak Color prints from the 1930’s to the 1980’s] fading was so swift–an average of 15 years or less–that color photographs from the Kennedy White House were found to have significantly degraded between… 1963 and… 1979. The problem is so widespread and profound… that when the George Eastman House mounted a traveling exhibit on color photography in 1982, its curators were unable to find even a single undamaged image from the 1940’s and 50’s. -The Washington Post Magazine May 18th, 2003 | ||||||||
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