Archival no More

While reading a thread on the permanence of Polaroid 664, it struck me that there was no real discussion here on the future of archival quality printing, especially from the perspective of Library of Congress and other collections.

I have done several HABS (Historic American Building Survey) projects, and a number of others for private and state collections. The protocol is 4x5 and above, full archival processing, and contact print on AZO paper. AZO is the only paper accepted for this use by LOC, as it is the only silver chloride paper remaining. With the coming demise of that paper, some such as myself have hoarded a supply that should keep us out of mischief until we are too old to care anymore. But what about the photographers that come into this in the next several years as current public inventories have been exhausted?

What future lies for what will become an overwhelming need to document and archive the rapidly disappearing historic fabric of yesterday? Anyone have any thoughts on this?

Pragmatist said:

While reading a thread on the permanence of Polaroid 664, it struck me that there was no real discussion here on the future of archival quality printing, especially from the perspective of Library of Congress and other collections.

I have done several HABS (Historic American Building Survey) projects, and a number of others for private and state collections. The protocol is 4x5 and above, full archival processing, and contact print on AZO paper. AZO is the only paper accepted for this use by LOC, as it is the only silver chloride paper remaining. With the coming demise of that paper, some such as myself have hoarded a supply that should keep us out of mischief until we are too old to care anymore. But what about the photographers that come into this in the next several years as current public inventories have been exhausted?

What future lies for what will become an overwhelming need to document and archive the rapidly disappearing historic fabric of yesterday? Anyone have any thoughts on this?

Click to expand...

hi patrick -

i do a bunch of habs stuff both at the federal and state level too.
i was just thumbing through my "guidelines for photographic submissions" trying to remember where i read that azo was a required paper ... but i was mistaken - it says a contact or "speed paper" is recommended but any single weight or double weight fiber based paper will do, as long as it is processed archivally with no hardener.
i guess since azo is no more we have to rely on regular olde double weight paper. - and there is still a bunch of that ...

its been suggested in other threads here on apug when the topic of habs/haer work comes up, that the feds aren't too far off in accepting digital submissions. at the state level, in a lot of cases, 35mm film and 4x6 / 5x7 enlargements ( archival ) are accepted ... and for nr nominations + inventory/survey work first rc and digital + ink jet stuff is allowed because there are so few labs that will make fiber prints, not to mention not using hardener ...

at least you don't live in a state where the shpo's office says there is nothing left to document!

This is the new way to do business here in America; Anything goes.
I was drilled with the expectation of higher quality in everything I did when I was growing up. Our eventual downfall will be the government which fails to keep high standards. Just today I was watching the History Channel and there was a discussion of earthquake modifications on the cell house of Alcatraz. The engineer said the repair is almost seamless, all that shows is the color difference. We are at the point in time where the cement in concrete can be colored just like house paint. If it's important enough to do then why not get it right? I was told that there is almost always a better way that makes a big difference and really doesn't cost much more. You see this kind of approach almost everywhere. A new building with tile job where the tile is cut to slivers and at an angle. Then tiled where it will show the most instead of in a back corner or adjusting the layout so it doesn't appear at all.
Back to the AZO paper; If the best is available and the job requires the best then why go to a second choice? I expect that the lowering of standard will bite us in the end unless we demand it.
I think back to all of the home movies and pictures taken and wonder what life would be like without them to document our history.

Curt, when we come to Historic Preservation the thinking can range from very radical ends of the spectrum. While earning my masters in that discipline, I was confronted with the conservatives who stated that any repair to an historic structure must not emulate the original, but be obvious or labelled in a manner that differentiates the old from the new. Bah.

Then there were those at the other end that were willing to create complete historical fictions, placing period reconstructions into a structure without any proper evidence of the original fabric (long since gutted out). Sigh.

There is a middle ground for everything, and the tile simile is one I have used a lot. Thirty or fourty years ago, if a carpenter built something that was not plumb and square, they would be compelled to fix it or be fired. There were no geometrically increasing slivers of tile on any wall. It is an examination of the willingness to comprimise quality for the mediocre in the race for cutting cost and expediency to increase profits. It is this loss of striving for profit over pride of craftsmanship that has helped to sink American industry and make cheap merchandise an acceptable "norm".

The "work" that we are discussing here in these forums is a rejection of that thesis. Although we are often compelled to deal with increasingly mediocre stocks of materials, and diminishing selection of those materials, there are those things that still stand out and are amenable to shaping by those with an eye for craft. In many cases, our hard tools are things that are many years old, and we resurrect formulae designed to serve the early 20th century ghosts of silver progress.

The digital world will change and one day create and embrace a continuing technology that will make "archival" a reality, something that is safe and can be retrieved with surity. But we also know that this day is many years in the future. For now, we who are here, hold the longest keys to that short lived thing we call permanence. We are the ones for taking and crystallizing a four dimensional slice of reality into two dimensions for future generations. As New Orleans demonstrates, all of man's fabric left on the landscape, and his patterns within it are transitory. It is our art form that will serve as the testament for what was and those who now only walk by virtue of our two dimensional silver metaphors. Let's hope that our supply of concrete patch does not run out...

John, maybe your SHPO does not grasp the need to capture that which has reached or is reaching the 50 year mark. Then there is the notable and colloquial that will never survive that long.

The Kentucky Heritage Council [SHPO] protocols will accept RC/VC enlargements along with Ektachrome slides. As you note, the commercial labs and their automated processes do not allow for fiber base, and the work is generally crappy. I spent a tour as assistant director for UK's Center for Historic Architecture & Preservation, and had a deuce of a time with students who even after precise instructions, went out and got that godawful C-41 faux B/W film and were well pleased with the nasty little work they did. They were not as well pleased when sent back out to do it right.

I am sure that you have chewed through John Burns treatise on recordation. In that he specifies AZO as the LOC prime. It gets confusing though in the actual HABS/HAER guidelines as written by Jack Boucher (the king of 5x7). He states in the beginning that AZO is the only surviving contact paper (written in 2001) and that there are no RC contact papers. The door then is opened up later to wit: "At this time, all documentary photography produced according to these standards MUST be on fiber based single weight paper and dried to a full gloss finish."

This opens the door to many questions. Variable or fixed grade? Baryta/brightner base or no? Sigh again. Sometimes the project gatekeepers stop us from challenging these questions. I documented Thomas Farm at Monocacy National Battlefield a couple years ago for the NPS. The lighting & weather conditions late winter made negative tonality a nightmare in some instances. A VC fiber would have solved the problem but no dice. Bah.

LOC and others are going have to come around just because what they want aint no more. But we all know how bureaucracies move along...

hi patrick

the shpo is pretty knowledgable about preservation-stuff -
he's been the shpo for 20 +/- years

... i think the problem now lies with the fact that the federal program has shelved anything with local -state significance making it the state's charge to document that sort of stuff, and only accepting nationally significant sites/structures. the problems are that there is not any real rhyme or reason as to formats being use to document these buildings/places - and that instead of requiring the same standards as the national program, the states are marching to a different drummer, so to speak, whether it is because of limited storage space or radical leadership at the state level. kind of strange though, knowing that every submission i have made has been 2 copies - one for the feds, and one for the locals.

go figure ...

i hadn't seen the latest version of the guidelines - i guess mine is from the late 80s when they just suggested single weight paper and didn't insist on azo. i am sure that the habs office and loc will ammend the guidelines to allow for other papers ... i know over the last 15 years i have only submitted on single weight papers and not very many of them have been on azo. nothing i have submitted has had any problems, and in conversations with jack boucher he knew my work and didn't say anything to me about my submissions being on the wrong paper-stock...

the secetary of interior's standards for tax credit certification you alluded to mainly was for additions, wasn't it - that an addition had to clearly show that it was from now, not in a "reconstructionalist" style mimicing the original builder, so at some time in the future if records did not exist, there would be no question which part of the structure was of historic significance? i think it also had to do with getting a federal tax credit for the certification of the project.

its good to know a fellow preservationist here on apug

-john

jnanian said:

- it says a contact or "speed paper" is recommended

Click to expand...

That wording seems as old as what they're trying to preserve! A "speed paper" is any enlarging speed paper, or at least that's what it meant 60 years ago.

More difficult will be to find any single-weight FB paper with Azo gone...

Curt: I took a historic preservation seminar at USC a summer ago, and one thing they stressed was that restoration was to be avoided whenever possible and that any repairs or renovations to the fabric of a building should be distinct from the original so future generations can delineate clearly. Not my philosophy, but it seems to work.

It really is relative, a plaster ceiling would look pretty strange if the repair was was done in a different color, texture etc.. But in furniture it has been common to repair in a different species of wood. I wouldn't want the Golden Gate bridge to have different colored sections so future generations could see the where the repairs were made. I know this is way off topic so I'll stop.

Pardon my writing, it's Christmas day now at 1:08 am and... what am I doing up at this hour on this site anyways.

Happy Holidays, Christmas, etc. whatever, to all.

Curt

Athanasius, the biggest issues encountered are the interpretive considerations the hardliners take on a conservation or restoration project. I have not found this to be a problem on rehabilitation or reuse foci. Let’s take the issue of a section of missing baseboard. Aesthetically I have two options. One I can custom mill the new piece to match, or perhaps I might find an identical historical piece in a surplus lumber or demolition project. In doing this, the old “Colonial Williamsburg” indictment comes out, and dictums follow that the replacement piece must be of contemporary program, easily discernable old from new. In exact replacement of known fabric, it is all rather anal to argue the academic point of authenticity and authorship, when the goal is to repair.

I will agree with them when considering a complete room or section of a structure that has been robbed of the bulk of its fabric, but not just a stick of wood. All of this is a response to the historic fictions that were created in the past under the heading of preservation and interpretation. There are many "house museums" that were "restored" by well meaning persons that are grossly out of sync with any evolution of the built fabric. When we inject intellectualism into the fray to elicit understanding of the meaning of the fabric (influences, beliefs, etc) as a method of controlling for false history, we lose track of sensibility in a wash of "narrative" and "semniotics" and similar Kafkaesque nostrums. It is these academic debates that keeps academics earning a salary, not what makes special buildings special, or even in the alternate sustainable. Bad carpentry for the sake of some mistaken principle is not preservation.