How do you store finished prints?

[mooseontheloose]

Over this past year I have been working hard in the darkroom to produce a portfolio of mostly lith prints (I'm still not finished). As a standard practice, once I had an image the way I liked it, I made a number of copies (anywhere from 2-10 extra) to experiment with various toning techniques and/or other processes. As a result, even though my portfolio consists of only 30 images, I have closer to 200 prints (or more) waiting for further work.

My problem? Well, as some of you may know, I am moving to Japan soon (on Wednesday). I can't take everything with me, so I split them up, taking only three (!) prints of each image with me to Japan, and leaving the rest here in Canada for now. The problem is, I have no idea of what's the best way to store them over the long term. Should each print be individually sleeved, and then boxed together? Can the prints be stored in stack in a dry environment? I never really had to consider this before, as I was mostly making RC prints (contact and proofs) as I was honing my darkroom skills. Now I have all these fiber prints that I'm not quite prepared to deal with in terms of storage.

Of course, I had to leave this until the last minute when there's virtually nothing I can do about it, but, based on advice given here, I could order the materials online and get my mother (!) to properly store the prints within the next month or two.

 

[jp498]

I think stacking them in a lower humidity clean location would be the best idea. Perhaps an archival storage box?

I use RC instead of fiber, but I have prints all over the place.

I've got a couple 100-sheet boxes with prints stacked in them. I've got 25-sheet paper packages with prints in them. The black plastic bag the unexposed paper comes in is good for keeping the prints clean and paws off them.

I've got inkjet prints in a stack between pieces of mattboard. I've got a paper document organizer (folding file?) that I have prints in, that's good for keeping the smaller ones sorted by date.

I've also got a project on the backburner to refurb a wood flat file drawer system I got from a surveyor's office. That will be good for the big inkjet and silver prints.

 

[Robert Hall]

Boxes, walls, tables, drawers, and generally all over the place.

 

[Rich Ullsmith]

A large plastic storage bin is great. You didn't say what size your prints were, but there are large flat bins that can go under the bed.

The only way I have ever irretrievably lost a photo or negative was due to water damage. Not acid attack from poor materials, or sulfides, or UV, or non-archival plastic sleeves. Ground floor water. Does it every time!

 

[Colin Corneau]

Check at Photo Central, I saw some storage cases for prints, negs etc that are worth a look.

 

[brian steinberger]

My personal method of storage in is in an archival box with a sheet of archival tissue in between each print.

 

[Steve Roberts]

For long-term storage of what I consider important prints, individual storage packets (clear one side, opaque tissue the other) packed in manufacturers' paper boxes and then placed inside a large, sealed wooden case that I made with a hefty bag of silica gel. Those unimportant prints that are in limbo (not good enough to do anything with, too good to throw out) and that just get left around the place don't seem to fare any better or worse than the ones I take care of. All this relates primarily to RC.

Steve

 

[Doremus Scudder]

Since the big enemy of photographs is an acid environment (assuming they are properly fixed and washed), the optimum storage would be interleaved with buffered acid-free paper and stored in a buffered acid-free storage box.

I imagine that you could omit the interleaving and still have relatively good storage conditions if the storage area is unpolluted and the prints were properly processed. Just be sure they are clean so you don't scratch the surface of the prints.

Best,

Doremus Scudder
www.DoremusScudder.com

 

[wclark5179]

Most of my un-mounted prints I store in mt boxes used for photography paper. I put them into the plastic bag that the paper came in and it seems to work fine.

 

[naugastyle]

I wish I knew a good answer. It's not that I can't figure out how to buy acid-free boxes, it's more that in my small apartment I will soon run out of space.

As of now I have several 5x7 boxes (mostly the 1" clamshell kind but I also have a couple 2 1/2" deep ones) organized by subject, an 8x10 box (less than half full) and an 11x14 box (empty). For a project I'm currently working on, I've decided to store the 5x7 work prints in sleeves in the same binder as the negs and contact sheets, just to have everything contained in one place. I've only been printing since October and have about 11-12 years' worth of negatives in binders, a very small amount of stuff compared to a lot of people here...and yet, am already pushing it on storage space.