Fibre Paper "dissolves" After drying

Philipp Grewenbach · Jul 27, 2020

Hello everybody,

I encountered a strange Problem yesterday that I have neither heard of nor Seen before...
My Fibre print just sort of "dissolved" After drying, that is the Emulsion seems to go off...
I printed on Bergger Prestige CB gloss, developed in ADOX MCC, Stop and fix as usual, and After about 40 minutes washing in running water, I selenium toned it in Rollei Selenium toner (1+20). Afterwards, I washed it again for about 30 minutes. First I let it dry a little just lying freely, then I squeeged it onto a Level Glass surface.
After two days, When taking it off, it looks completely destroyed! I have Never Seen this before...
And the strange Thing is, I have done two more Prints the Same Day on the Same Paper and in the Same chemistry, dried them on the Same Glass screen.... And they Are alright!
Does anyone have any idea what caused this?

This is the strangely destroyed picture...

And this one is alright, printed the Same Day, and dried on the same screen...

Dmosher · Jul 27, 2020

That really looks like mold to me. Any chance the wet paper was dropped on a floor or something similar?

Philipp Grewenbach · Jul 27, 2020

Dmosher said:
That really looks like mold to me. Any chance the wet paper was dropped on a floor or something similar?

Uh, mold on the paper would be awful... I can't remember dropping it somewhere, and even if, this seems like a lot of mold to form within two days, especially since the other print which was literally a few centimeters beside it is completely intact.... and I have noticed that I can "rub of" the black parts, so it really seems like the gelatine lost hold or something...

Dmosher · Jul 27, 2020

Gelatin would be a great food for mold and the old orange/purple blobs are what really make me think mold. Google a photo of 'moldy paper'. Two days doesn't seem too fast in the right conditions, but it does seem odd that the other print was unaffected as well. It is also kind of odd that it doesn't seem to be outside the image areas. Can you hold it at an angle or anything to see if the white boarders are affected as well? Hopefully someone else has more insight.

Love the mask btw, I have one just like it, it was one of my first quarantine purchases. I have yet to wear it outside the house, my 6th grader would probably die of embarrassment if I did.

pentaxuser · Jul 27, 2020

Philpp, is the OK sheet from the same box and was it the next sheet down from the not OK sheet. Were all the prints you made before and after the not OK one OK? If it is one not OK sheet only then it suggests that a reasonable conclusion may be that the problem lies outside the box of sheets and is somewhere in the handling and processing. The odds of one bad sheet in a box of OK sheets have to be very high against this being the explanation.

Two days days for mould( British spelling) to appear seems very unlikely as well, I feel

pentaxuser

Luckless · Jul 27, 2020

What is your drying setup like? Do you have a vent or something that could be disturbing mould spores near where one print was left to dry, or maybe it was the top print on a stacked drying rack?

Did you by any chance sneeze on the bad print?

However, based on the pattern shown - Not extending all the way to the edge, but also not showing an irregular shape or bias in pattern, I would lean towards "Something contaminated was place on the print"

Pattern lets up before it reaches the edge of the printed area, so that would suggest that contamination didn't happen while the paper was in an easel or similar. Did you set a box on the paper at any point? Could also be that the bag the paper is stored in is contaminated, and something placed on top of that forced the surfaces into tight contact and transferred that way if the print in question happened to have been the top sheet.

Philipp Grewenbach · Jul 27, 2020

Dmosher said:
Gelatin would be a great food for mold and the old orange/purple blobs are what really make me think mold. Google a photo of 'moldy paper'. Two days doesn't seem too fast in the right conditions, but it does seem odd that the other print was unaffected as well. It is also kind of odd that it doesn't seem to be outside the image areas. Can you hold it at an angle or anything to see if the white boarders are affected as well? Hopefully someone else has more insight.

Love the mask btw, I have one just like it, it was one of my first quarantine purchases. I have yet to wear it outside the house, my 6th grader would probably die of embarrassment if I did.

I am affraid you're right and it is mould, at least some of the blobs have eaten through to the rear... I am only worried because I can't think of how the spores got there. The sheets were from the same box, processed the same day, they were in the same toner-solution...

Thanks a Lot! I also do not wear it on a regular basis but it is a nice element for pandemic-pictures...

Philipp Grewenbach · Jul 27, 2020

pentaxuser said:
Philpp, is the OK sheet from the same box and was it the next sheet down from the not OK sheet. Were all the prints you made before and after the not OK one OK? If it is one not OK sheet only then it suggests that a reasonable conclusion may be that the problem lies outside the box of sheets and is somewhere in the handling and processing. The odds of one bad sheet in a box of OK sheets have to be very high against this being the explanation.

Two days days for mould( British spelling) to appear seems very unlikely as well, I feel

pentaxuser

Thanks! It was the next sheet from the box, so it probably was something from outside...

Luckless said:
What is your drying setup like? Do you have a vent or something that could be disturbing mould spores near where one print was left to dry, or maybe it was the top print on a stacked drying rack?

Did you by any chance sneeze on the bad print?

However, based on the pattern shown - Not extending all the way to the edge, but also not showing an irregular shape or bias in pattern, I would lean towards "Something contaminated was place on the print"

Pattern lets up before it reaches the edge of the printed area, so that would suggest that contamination didn't happen while the paper was in an easel or similar. Did you set a box on the paper at any point? Could also be that the bag the paper is stored in is contaminated, and something placed on top of that forced the surfaces into tight contact and transferred that way if the print in question happened to have been the top sheet.

After the print dried a bit in the air, I placed it face up on an even table, then a glass plate on top, and some Heavy books on the glass... No vent, but if it is mould, then probably there had to be something on this spot of the glass plate... I dried Like This for the First Time, usually I use a hot press, but I wanted to try conserving the semi-gloss of wet baryta.

Well, I think I will stick to hot-drying... And the Formalin hardener is also bacteriocidic and fungicidic, hooray

ic-racer · Jul 27, 2020

Not sure what happened, but if you can duplicate that maybe you are the next Joel-Peter Witkin....

grain elevator · Jul 27, 2020

Spores are everywhere, always. The key to preventing mold is conditions dry enough for it not to grow. This print must have been not completely dry before you sandwiched it under the glass plate. Maybe you squeegeed it less vigorously than the other one, or it was place below the other so that it collected its runoff. The warm weather these days helps mold grow as well.

Vincent Peri · Jul 28, 2020

Hmm... looks like the
picture of Dorian Gray
to me...

Fibre Paper "dissolves" After drying

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