GAWAIN WEAVER ART CONSERVATION

Summer 2022

Gawain Weaver

Head Conservator

Courtney Helion

Assistant Conservator

Jennifer Olsen

Conservator

Sydney Collins

Conservation Technician

Description

This photograph of high school baseball players during the 2017-2018 school year, was torn into 5 separate pieces. The goal of this treatment was to rejoin the separated fragments, stabilize the print, and remount.

Treatment Summary

The treatment began with realigning the tears starting with the bottom left corner piece, then moving to the larger and more complex tears. I was using a 1 to 3 rice to wheat starch paste. The rice paste is slightly weaker than wheat, so the mixture helps to provide for a better slip for working. One technique I used in order to help align the fragment, was using strips of the adhesive from post it notes to temporarily align pieces on the verso.

Since the surface of RC prints are basically plastic, non-polar and wax-like, the starch paste directly on the polyethylene won’t hold very well. Most adhesives would have more of an affinity for themselves than for these non-polar surfaces. So I was working with very small sections of the exposed paper to mend.

Some areas there was more overhang to work with, others not so much. But the goal for mending was to reintegrate the photograph with enough stability so that further mounting could take place and that would really keep the whole image together without falling apart again.

So the next step was remounting the print to a 4-ply mat board using the dry mount press. I preheated the press, assembled the mount package, then placed the package in the press for up to 4 minutes with rotation.

Some of the challenges of the project was that it was difficult to align the fragments without leaving gaps or visible paper fibers. Areas where there was more visual activity was easier, while the large black areas were most difficult. This was also my first time using the dry mount press, and it was a bit difficult trimming the dry mount tissue to size and then trimming the excess mat material to the exact print size.

Description

Ansel Adams was an American landscape photographer and environmentalist known for his black-and-white imagesof the American West. Adams coated his photographs for aesthetic reasons, in order to create a brilliant and even surface. To him a good coating would unify a worked surface by imparting a lustrous surface with high reflectance. Using coatings as a protection method was also important to Adams. He would coat unglazed photographs to provide easy maintenance and physical protection. He also was aware that coatings could discolor over time, but argued the coating was a necessary compromise for regular displayed prints without glazing. Adams preferred coating prints with a spray lacquer, which are generally made with a cellulose nitrate.

Treatment Report

Whether or not to remove a coating depends on many factors including the photograph type, age, condition, rarity, artist’s intent, and treatment viability. It is critical to evaluate the condition and intended use of the photograph, along with other important factors relating to ethics, connoisseurship, history, and alternatives to treatments.

1. Confirmed the coating as cellulose nitrate using the diphenylamine spot test with some varnish gathered on a cotton swab.
   
2. Removed the varnish using acetone on hand-rolled cotton swabs. 

Challenges

Some challenges that arose with this particular print on the left was that the surface was very crazed so there was concern that the yellowing varnish could be pushed further into the cracks making them even more visible and more difficult to remove. In this instance I started working very slowly and changed my cotton swab as soon as it turned yellow.

My next project was part of a seminar day focusing on one technique to reduce silver mirroring. While it was part of an educational afternoon to learn the process, we were also seeing if this technique would be a viable option for a client as the silver mirroring on their negatives was becoming a noticeable distraction on their resulting enlarged prints.

Description

Silver mirroring occurs when the silver in a photograph degrades. As the silver breaks down, some silver ions travel to the surface of the photograph and reduce to into metallic silver and silver sulfide, which produces a mirror-like deposit on the photograph. Silver mirroring can sometimes cause certain features of the photograph to become obscured. This condition can be exacerbated by poor storage conditions, such as storing photographs in high-humidity and acidic environments. While it is a form of silver image deterioration and while not the artist’s intent, it can also function as a sign of authenticity. Therefore In the treatment of photographs, the reduction of silver-mirroring is never approached lightly, but it is occasionally done in order to minimize any disfiguring effect upon the image.

Treatment Report

Print or negative is placed in:

1. Iodine-alcohol bath for 2 mins
2. Photo-Flo for 1 min
3. Fixer for 2 mins
4. Running water for 1 min
5. Hypo Clear for 3 min
6. Wash for 10+ minutes
7. Dry

Iodine is a strong oxidized which turns the metallic silver at the surface into silver iodine. The fixer (sodium thiosulfate) removes the silver iodine on the surface of the print. The silver thiosulfate compound is then soluble in the final wash.

Separating & Flattening

I removed the photographs from the original soiled and deformed folders and separated out the photographs that were severely blocked to treat later. Each folder received a number which was adhered to the outer envelops to keep track of where they came from. The rest of the photographs (those not needing further treatment) were set in a separate blotter stacks to dry.

Removing Paper Fibers

After all the prints were separated and out of their damaged housing, I moved on to treat the more damaged photographs. In order to release and unblock a few folders of photographs, I had to split them, sacrificing the backs of the photographs in order to save the faces. I then worked to remove the paper fibers on the face of the photographs using ethanol on brushes or cotton swabs which released nicely.

Consolidating Backs

Here is the verso of one of the more damaged photographs. I consolidated the separating layers using wheat starch paste and smoothed the fibers on the verso using a fine grit sand paper.

Flattening

Many of the prints had a slight distorted curl to them, some more dramatic than others. Nearly all of the photographs were resin-coated prints which means the paper base is sealed between two waterproofing (resin) layers, typically polyethylene. The lamination process adds strength to the base and RC paper is much tougher and durable than fiber based paper. But because RC prints are moisture resistant (they are plastic, not paper), there is only one way to flatten a resin-coated prints and that is with heat. So they were pressed in the dry mount press.

Rehousing

Last step was to rehouse the prints in new folders. GWAC also ordered new boxes for the folders to go into as well, so this is not the final presentation. Overall there were about 100 folders, each ranging from approximately 24 to 72 prints inside. Once believed to be lost, these photographs can now be returned to the owner.

Challenges

Some challenges of the project (besides the pests) was that some of the prints proved a bit more difficult in removing the paper fibers from the recto. In this print on the left, the blue dye, which is on the top layer of chromogenic prints, was very sensitive to moisture. There was also the loss of ferrotyping, a change in surface characteristics, with the removal of the adhered paper fibers from the surface of the photographs. The project was also a huge materials cost mostly for the use of blotters and hollytex for separating and drying that many prints.