Tips for Photography Collectors

 

For storing photography, it is good to have a separate, even if small, room or at least a sectioned-off part of one. Stable temperature and humidity are of crucial importance. It also matters how the photographs are stored – the boxes, dust jackets and wrappers, furniture, setting.

 

Storing Photographs – the Environment

Most important in storing photographs are stable temperature and humidity. The rule of thumb is: the cooler the room, the longer the photographs will survive on their given base.

You can hardly have an air-conditioned storage room at home (a demanding and expensive solution, in fact), but it’s worth making sure that the space where you keep the photographs is rather low in light, well aired, neither too humid nor too dry, and exposed to as little temperature fluctuation as possible. Basements, attics, rooms with large windows or gable rooms should not, therefore, be used for storing photographs. Ideally, the room will have relatively stable climatic conditions naturally.

Temperature and Humidity

It’s important for temperature to not exceed 20°C and relative humidity be kept on a fixed level between 30% and 50%. In home conditions, the optimum achievable temperature is 18°C and 40% humidity. Fluctuations shouldn’t exceed +/- 2°C and +/- 5 percentage points of humidity.

 

It’s worth equipping yourself with a simple temperature and humidity meter to know the conditions in which the collection is stored and be able to check the situation from time to time, as at the beginning and end of the heating season (heating dries air) or at major weather changes. You can then observe what temperature and humidity changes occur and try to redress the situation, e.g. by installing a humidifier during the heating season or by turning heating up or down.

 

Storing your collection in cardboard boxes mitigates temperature and humidity fluctuations.

 

Note

If you have colour photographs or polaroids in your collection, it’s worth considering depositing them with an institution offering climate-controlled storage space. Colour photographs should be stored in temperatures close to 0°C or at least below 12°C. While few institutions in Poland have storage facilities this cool, the situation should be improving over time.

 

If you have nitrocellulose negatives in your collection (for tips on how to recognise them >>> Technique recognition – under construction), you should keep them in a refrigerator, but they require special enclosure and a separate refrigerator. Enclosing must be done under the supervision of a conservation specialist or a trained archivist. The Archaeology of Photography Foundation offers help in this regard.

Light

Colour and black and white photographs are sensitive to light, especially ultraviolet light. For this reason they shouldn’t be displayed on a wall that is sunlit during daytime, or close to a lamp or window.

 

If we display an old black-and-white or colour photograph at home, it’s worth checking from to time whether it hasn’t started fading – if it has, you should remove it from the wall and store away.

 

The cabinets with the collection should stand in a room inaccessible to natural daylight and if that’s not possible, the amount of natural light should at least be reduced.

 

Lending works from the collection, you should make sure they are not displayed for too long (2-3 months maximum) or illuminated with strong light.

 

If you have a 19th-century photograph in one copy in your collection, store it away and display a fine reproduction.

 

Furniture

Photographs shouldn’t be stored in new or renovated wooden cabinets, particularly those made of plywood or chipboard. They should be kept in powder-painted metal cabinets (the archival standard). In the economic version, you can place the boxes on a metal storage rack and then cover it with a ‘curtain’ of black, light-impermeable fabric.

 

It’s important for no materials containing organic solvents (e.g. oil paint, nitro lacquer, alkyd paint, etc.) to be used in the room where the collection is stored.

 

Storing Photographs – Enclosure

 

Selecting the Materials

Photographs (both positives and negatives) can be stored either in special paper enclosures for photography archiving (should be PAT-approved) or in polyester or polyethylene plastic enclosures (also PAT-approved). Each of these solutions has its strengths and weaknesses, so it’s hard to give a clear advice on which one to use. It’s worth consulting a conservation or photography expert, because certain types of negatives and positives should never be kept in plastic enclosures.

 

Note. All photography enclosing materials should be bought from specialised dealers. Addresses can be found >>> here.

 

Paper: Pros

- protects well from slight temperature and humidity fluctuations

- inexpensive

- slows down certain ageing processes, e.g. the acidification of photographic paper

- breathable and thus permeable for active substances potentially released by the photograph

- pencil-writable

 

Paper: Cons

- doesn’t protect against water

- non-transparent, so photographs have to be taken out to be viewed, which may result in damage

- takes up more space

 

Polyester: Pros

- photographs can be easily and safely viewed

- protects against dust and hand touch

- protects against water (though not against flooding, because the enclosures are not tightly closed)

 

Polyester: Cons

- non-breathable, which means it will intensify the effect of any chemical substances released by the photograph

- requires a very stable environment

- expensive

- writing requires a special marker pen

 

Positives

Every positive should be enclosed separately.

 

Positives can be enclosed in three different ways.

 

Paper: four-flap foldable ‘jackets’ of standard dimensions. For small formats, e.g. postcard, dedicated, special-glue envelopes can be used. The paper has to be made from cotton or highly purified wood pulps, should be lignin-free and acid-free, with acidification-slowing alkaline reserve. This is a traditional, inexpensive, relatively safe way of storing photographs, but an impractical one, because the photographs are hidden from view. Pencil should be used to write down the basic information on the enclosure: author, title, date, and catalogue number, if the collection has its own filing system. An index of contents with small thumbnail images can be placed on top of each box to make ‘navigation’ easier.

Polyester: Mylar or Mellinex should be used and all enclosures should pass the PAT test. Polyester enclosure is very convenient when the photographs are often made available or when you want to have easy access to the information on the front and back of the photographs. Choosing polyester enclosures, you should note their type, as they can be folded into an L, a U or an I I shape. The signature or other information can be written down using a special alcohol-free permanent marker.

Passepartout: the most advanced and safest way of storing photographs (especially art photographs), often used in museums. It prevents the piece from being touched, allows various formats in a single box, and means that the photographs don’t need to be specially framed for exhibitions. This is a costly solution, requiring you to hire an expert and taking up a lot of space – but it’s worth applying at least to the most precious items in your collection.

The materials have to be of highest quality and the framing properly done: the front and back frames should meet conservation standards and are made of the so called ‘museum cardboard’, acid-free, PAT-conforming and is only available in broken white or black. The photograph has to be properly attached and can be fastened with polyester corner gussets or strips glued to the passepartout back. Sometimes conservation specialists use Japanese tissue and glue to attach only the upper edge of the photograph, which greatly helps in research work. The front of the passepartout is connected by framing tape with the back, creating a sort of booklet. A format-trimmed sheet of acid-free Japanese tissue is placed between the photograph and the passepartout frame. The description is written down with pencil inside the framing, either on the passepartout or the back.

Several types of gussets. The most commonly available small corner gussets can’t be used for framing collected photography, because they hold too small a fragment of the photograph.

 

Boxes

So enclosed, the positives should be stored in acid-free boxes. There are several kinds of boxes suitable for photography storage – paperboard, corrugated fibreboard, and bound.

Boxes made of cotton-fibre paperboard – their main strengths are material safety and inexpensive price, are easily available in Poland, but the opening system is impractical.

Another type of paperboard box, with corner reinforcements made of metal – manufactured in the US, available in Germany.

Boxes made of acid-free corrugated fibreboard – lightweight, with a practical opening system, rigid and only slightly more expensive than paperboard boxes, but are unavailable in Poland and need to be ordered from Germany or the Netherlands.

Bound boxes – custom-made, usually by conservation specialists at major museums or libraries. They should be made of acid-free paperboard, using proper glue (it’s necessary to check what kind of glue is to be used to avoid toxic ones), and bound in canvas. These are very solid and durable boxes, but expensive, heavy, and if a wrong kind of glue is used, they can be toxic. Bound boxes can be ordered abroad, e.g. in France.

 

Storage of Photography Albums

If you have photography albums in your collection, they should be stored as integral objects. Old photographs shouldn’t be cut out, torn out or unstuck (the latter at least without the help of an expert) from their album. To minimise the wear of photographs in an album, format-trimmed sheets of acid-free cotton paper can be placed between the pages – such paper offers good protection, doesn’t bend like tissue, and is durable. Every album should be stored in a separate box made to order, a possibility offered since recently by Beskid Plus, who cut boxes out of acid-free paperboard, with a convenient opening system. When ordering such a box, remember to add approximately 1 cm from each side to allow easy manipulation.