Recovering silver from fixed prints?

sepiareverb · Aug 15, 2020

having just sold my entire darkroom, I’m looking at 40 years worth of prints that will simply go to the landfill unless there is some means of getting the silver out of them. I’ve done some searching but I’m just getting silver recovery from Fixer or unfixed film. Anyone know if I can grab this silver or if it is just going to the dump?

Vaughn · Aug 15, 2020

We sent ours to a recycler -- they burnt the paper and extracted the silver.

grain elevator · Aug 15, 2020

Rehalogenating bleach -> fix -> recover? Might not be wort it though. And of course won't work with fully toned prints.
Sad to hear you're giving up the darkroom.

sepiareverb · Aug 15, 2020

Vaughn said:
We sent ours to a recycler -- they burnt the paper and extracted the silver.

Sounds expensive. There are many shelving units full.

grain elevator said:
Rehalogenating bleach -> fix -> recover? Might not be wort it though. And of course won't work with fully toned prints.
Sad to hear you're giving up the darkroom.

Sounding like the dump is my option. Been making apparently uninteresting photographs for forty years, they got dried and boxed and stacked. Nobody wants to do anything with them, it now seems like a waste of time and money.

pentaxuser · Aug 15, 2020

I wonder what damage the silver does to the land if properly fixed and washed as these prints will undoubtedly be and how long might it be before this damage begins to manifest itself. We have separate bins for paper and cardboard where I live in the U.K. and now I wonder what the company handling recycled paper and cardboard would do with silver gelatin prints

My guess is that in what will be a massive paper recycling plant the fact that prints can be silver gelatin as opposed to inkjet would most likely not register with the recycler

oentaxuser

sepiareverb · Aug 15, 2020

pentaxuser said:
My guess is that in what will be a massive paper recycling plant the fact that prints can be silver gelatin as opposed to inkjet would most likely not register with the recycler

oentaxuser

Hadn’t thought of just dumping them in the recycling bin, would fill our bin every two weeks for half a year I’d guess.

grain elevator · Aug 15, 2020

I hope you're keeping at least some prints, if not for anything else, then to remind you of the good times you had making them.
This is making me think about what I make prints for. Should probably focus on getting them out there, giving prints to people and exhibiting somehow, eventually...
Another thought on your question: If they're fiber paper, why not ask a company that does paper recycling in your area? I may be wrong but the amount of paper may be more valuable than the bit of silver minus cost of its recovery.

sepiareverb · Aug 15, 2020

I will reach out to our one option for recycling, but as they’re a national company I’ll doubt they will want anything to do with the prints either hah! Pretty sure I don’t want to keep any of it. Anything from the last 15 years went into a box after getting a scan for sending out, and has not been out since.

Vaughn · Aug 15, 2020

sepiareverb said:
Sounds expensive. There are many shelving units full.
...

Actually for many years, we were paid 10 cents a pound, and the stuff was carted off for free -- then they stopped paying us, but still hauled it away (university photo program...125 students making a lot art.) The waste guy from campus went down to check out the operation in Sacramento, I believe. He saw room full of silver bars waiting for the market to be favorable. This was maybe 15 years ago.

pentaxuser · Aug 15, 2020

sepiareverb said:
Sounding like the dump is my option. Been making apparently uninteresting photographs for forty years, they got dried and boxed and stacked. Nobody wants to do anything with them, it now seems like a waste of time and money.

If you have any grand children( assuming that 40 years of darkroom work makes you old enough ) then as long as you have the time you might be surprised by how long the grandkids will take looking through them.

So why do you need the time as opposed to the kids? Simple: Each photo or a very large number of them will result in the question where was this and what was happening. The kids learn a lot about the "old days" and your memory is stimulated to an extent that you may not believe possible until you try it

pentaxuser

Sal Santamaura · Aug 15, 2020

Perhaps offer them for sale to a silver recovery firm over at the Large Format Forum. Just be sure to price each print individually.

Ian Grant · Aug 15, 2020

With paper silver recovery is usually just burn it and then put the ash in a furnace with flux to melt and recover the silver. With film it's rehalogenate with Ferric Chloride, the fix, pass the fixer through an electrolytic unit to plate out the silver, you can keep reusing the silver for quite a while, eventually the fixer goes through wire woll to take out silver to below 4ppm.

I worked in precious metal recovery for nearly 30 years, the company I worked for last was founded 260 years ago - they claim - actually that's how long the family has been in the trade but my boss saw his inherited company go bust in the Bunker Hunt crisis, it exists under different ownership. He set up an entirely new company.

Ironically it was Kodak, Ilford, Agfa and Fuji who were that main creditors the company did did all the silver recovery. as the Silver price plummeted the photo companies wanted their money not the worthless silver

Ian

sepiareverb · Aug 15, 2020

Nothing within driving distance that I can find. Another of the perks of living in the middle of nowhere.

AgX · Aug 15, 2020

I just checked at a major european recycler, they still accept halide paper. Thus the specific technology still is there.

Whether a recycler in your situation though would be economic, is a different matter.

removed account4 · Aug 15, 2020

https://www.itronics.com recycles silver. maybe they have a suggestion regarding your prints. ...
( they are in Nevada )

MattKing · Aug 15, 2020

sepiareverb said:
having just sold my entire darkroom, I’m looking at 40 years worth of prints that will simply go to the landfill unless there is some means of getting the silver out of them. I’ve done some searching but I’m just getting silver recovery from Fixer or unfixed film. Anyone know if I can grab this silver or if it is just going to the dump?

I don't have an answer for you, but I for one am sad to see you thinking this way.
I've always found your posts here interesting, and I like the work on your website.
Perhaps a brief delay on your decision, to hopefully gain some extra perspective?

sepiareverb · Aug 15, 2020

AgX said:
I just checked at a major european recycler, they still accept halide paper. Thus the specific technology still is there.

Whether a recycler in your situation though would be economic, is a different matter.

Well, Monday will bring some calls. Thank you.

jnantz said:
https://www.itronics.com recycles silver. maybe they have a suggestion regarding your prints. ...
( they are in Nevada )

And thanks for the lead!

MattKing said:
I don't have an answer for you, but I for one am sad to see you thinking this way.
I've always found your posts here interesting, and I like the work on your website.
Perhaps a brief delay on your decision, to hopefully gain some extra perspective?

Thank you for that.

I’ve been mulling this over for months, the darkroom was a small amount of my footprint in this house, the “archive” takes up a full quarter of my basement. I’ve not sold a print or had anything on a wall in nearly twenty years, and not for lack of trying. I had my moment of big-time gallery success during the last of the nineties into 2003. Haven’t hung a single print since. No grandkids likely in my future, and there are enough framed prints here for my kids should they want any. There comes a time when a career ends, mine seems to have ended in 2015 when I lost my teaching job and couldn’t get another. Hanging on to all the leftovers just seems dumb.

reddesert · Aug 15, 2020

You could give them away. If it wasn't for COVID, you could set up a table at a street fair and offer a stack of prints as "Free Art" - the stack would probably all be gone by the end of the day.

I understand the negative associations with career disappointments but a dollar return on art only happens for a small number of people.

awty · Aug 15, 2020

Yes, someone might have a use. You could ask any local schools or kindergartens if they would like to paint on them with water colours or something. Someone might want to cover a wall, instead of painting. Be hundreds of uses, any thing is better than landfill.
I have a big pile of old copper and brass pipes and fixtures I often rummage through to make stuff out of. Dont need the scrap money. Lots of old stuff can be re purposes.

Patrick Robert James · Aug 15, 2020

Bob, if you are really done with it, then maybe you could give them away. Put them in stacks of five or ten or something and anyone that wants some mail them off. Shame to see work get thrown in the trash. I'm sure there are people out there too that have never seen a really good silver print.

sepiareverb · Aug 17, 2020

I appreciate the sentiments, but where I live they would just sit. I'm in the middle of nowhere, and multiple trips to the post office, with the associated need to purchase packaging for mailing out prints is certainly not in my future.

Would like to get the silver out for closure, but I can move on.

Recovering silver from fixed prints?

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