HistoryAmazing 100-Year-Old Negatives Discovered Frozen In A Block Of Antarctica’s Ice

alapin · Jun 16, 2020

This may have been already posted here.
Found this today. We are always are asking about how long film will last in a frozen state. Here a surprise answer.https://canyouactually.com/100-year-old-negatives-discovered-in-antarctica/

alapin

Donald Qualls · Jun 16, 2020

Typical ignorance of photograpy.

Those were not "exposed but unprocessed," as the article claims; the last photo shows the block of negatives, stuck together, with partial image visible on the top one. They'd been developed, fixed, and presumably dried before they got left behind as the crew evacuated to their ship. The silver image survived a century in the ice, but this says precisely nothing about how long unexposed film can be kept in a freezer without suffering excessive fog and/or loss of sensitivity.

Andre Noble · Jun 27, 2020

When I was a school teacher, each year I did a research and writing assignment with my students on Shackleton and the Endurance. the kids really got in to it.

Donald Qualls · Jun 27, 2020

Andre Noble said:
When I was a school teacher, each year I did a research and writing assignment with my students on Shackleton and the Endurance. the kids really got in to it.

Yep, Polar expeditions (both Arctic and Antarctic) were long enough ago to still have a sense of adventure, but recent enough to have been pretty well photographed -- and even as late as the Antarctic explorations, there were still situations in which people had to make sacrificial choices, or engage in some genuine heroism -- or heroic failure. A northern situation similar to Shackleton's was the Franklin expedition to the Northwest Passage in 1845; it ended with all hands lost -- and it wasn't until more than a century later that we knew it was due to taking canned food sealed (by people who obviously either knew no better or just didn't care) with lead solder, slowly poisoning everyone who was left after the ship froze into the ice. Or perhaps it wasn't actually lead poisoning; there seems to be conflict.

Junior high kids eat this kind of thing up.

removedacct1 · Jun 28, 2020

Donald Qualls said:
Typical ignorance of photograpy.

Those were not "exposed but unprocessed," as the article claims; the last photo shows the block of negatives, stuck together, with partial image visible on the top one. They'd been developed, fixed, and presumably dried before they got left behind as the crew evacuated to their ship. The silver image survived a century in the ice, but this says precisely nothing about how long unexposed film can be kept in a freezer without suffering excessive fog and/or loss of sensitivity.

I expect that by "unprocessed" they simply meant prints had not been made from the negatives.

John Bragg · Jun 28, 2020

I wonder what would be made of the lost plates and negatives from the Endurance. The ones that Frank Hurley was forced to leave behind. Very interesting story though.

Daniela · Jun 28, 2020

Great story! I really wish they had explained a bit of the restoration process, though.

Jojje · Jun 28, 2020

In case you want prints from Endurance expedition, at a very decent price, too:
http://shackleton-endurance.com/Shackleton/product-category/endurance-expedition-photographs/

Alan Edward Klein · Jun 28, 2020

Donald Qualls said:
Yep, Polar expeditions (both Arctic and Antarctic) were long enough ago to still have a sense of adventure, but recent enough to have been pretty well photographed -- and even as late as the Antarctic explorations, there were still situations in which people had to make sacrificial choices, or engage in some genuine heroism -- or heroic failure. A northern situation similar to Shackleton's was the Franklin expedition to the Northwest Passage in 1845; it ended with all hands lost -- and it wasn't until more than a century later that we knew it was due to taking canned food sealed (by people who obviously either knew no better or just didn't care) with lead solder, slowly poisoning everyone who was left after the ship froze into the ice. Or perhaps it wasn't actually lead poisoning; there seems to be conflict.

Junior high kids eat this kind of thing up.

I'm 75 and still eat this stuff up.

Donald Qualls · Jun 28, 2020

Yep. Some of the best documented great adventures in human history. Doubtless there have been many other adventures of similar magnitude and import -- but before the late 19th century, there was no visual method of documenting those adventures. Wet plates were hard enough to do that most of the Civil War documentary photos are now known to have been carefully set up before sensitizing the plate -- it wasn't until dry plates (and celluloid film) became available, starting in the 1870s, and the sensitivity got high enough (starting around 1895) to shoot candid subjects, that true documentation in the photojournalistic sense was possible. That was a time period that corresponded with the Wild West -- much of which was documented with wet plate, because it was a region amenable to the darkroom in a wagon -- and to the final pushes of Arctic, and almost the whole of Antarctic continental discovery.

HistoryAmazing 100-Year-Old Negatives Discovered Frozen In A Block Of Antarctica’s Ice

Privacy & Transparency

Privacy & Transparency