Displaying a BW negative?

Hi there,

I'm scanning in a lot of old family slides and came across two 5x7 negatives of my grandparents and father as a baby:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/paulmcevoy/4694743162/

Anyway, the negatives are pretty neat, on "Ansco Safety Film".

I'm wondering if I could display one of them. Would it work to put a piece of japan'd metal behind it, sort of like a Tintype? Has anyone done this? A google search didn't give me any ideas.

Thanks!
Paul

why not make contact prints and display those?

hi paul

like brad suggested you could make contact prints of the negatives, and get
positive prints, but you can also go the extra step and re-contact print
the positives and get paper negatives to display along side ( or instead of ) the
postive-prints ...

have fun !

john

Sorry for the record I've already scanned the negatives and can make a nice digital print of them. I was just wondering about displaying the negative as an actual physical object. The negatives are a bit damaged so I'm happier making a digital print after fixing it in Photoshop a little bit.

hi paul

i am guessing you not only want to hang the negative as an object
but to be able to see it, with all its imperfections ...
you can get some milk glass and a light source
you can mount them on a hanging light box.

you can get milk glass at the glass place near near union square
champagne glass ?... next to tir na nog.

if you just want to display the film as film .. get photo corners from a craft place window mount it.

I think I follow your question. I sometimes will take a recently developed negative and hold it emulsion side up over a dark background (a dark tray or just a dark corner of the darkroom) and will see a "positive". It works well with thin negatives, and poorly or not at all with dense ones. If your negs are thin you could certainly experiment with the negative emulsion side up over dark board and see if a positive image is visible - you have to be at the right angle as well. If it works then carry on the experiment with jappaned metal to see if that gives you more definition. I'm not sure if a space between the neg and the background would be needed. Mount in a shadow box maybe. If the negative is dense, I just don't think it will work.

Let us know how the results pan out.