Storing unfixed prints for later fixing

Purpose

To put a print that has never been in a fixing bath into store so that it stops changing as far as it can, is recognisable as unfixed by whoever finds it, and still carries a readable image when you come back.

When to use it

Every time an exposed sheet leaves the frame and does not go into a fixer: sheet B of the twin photograms in the unfixed silver photogram, a retrieved solargraph, a lumen print, or any printing-out sheet you are keeping while you decide. It runs again every time one of those packages is opened.

It does not cover a processed print (print processing), unexposed paper (handling paper in dim light), or Assignment 1’s cyanotype, which is washed rather than fixed and which the Library of Congress puts in unbuffered paper, not the buffered stock at step 5.

Before you start

You should already know why the sheet goes on changing, from the problem of permanence, and that fixing a print-out image costs density: the Getty atlas records that printing-out papers need deliberate overprinting because image intensity falls during processing. Later is a decision, not a delay, and Part XI names the bath such an image needs when it is made.

!Which storage rule applies to a sheet that was never fixed

An unfixed print carries its whole load of silver halide, so the maker’s rule for unused paper governs it: ILFORD’s is a cool, dry place in the original packaging, avoiding high temperature and humidity. Its print-keeping paragraph is for paper processed as it recommends, which this is not. That reading is the course’s, not ILFORD’s. Nothing here makes the sheet permanent; only fixing and washing does.

On the bench: a photo-safe enclosure; a light-tight outer, for which the paper’s own black bag inside its box serves; a pencil; a scanner or camera; the dim room from handling paper in dim light; and this sheet’s exposure log row.

Level A on the classification rubric: a dry coated article, nothing weighed, dissolved or heated, no liquid waste. The exposure at risk is the print’s, not yours.

Procedure

Sealing it

1. Draw the curtains and work by the dimmest light you can read by.
2. Label the back in pencil before the sheet moves: UNFIXED, the identifier, the date. Pencil only — the Library of Congress names marking originals in ink or felt-tip as negligence.
3. Hold it by the edges, with freshly washed hands or clean nitrile gloves, off the image surface.
4. Scan it now, face down on the platen with the lid closed; invert the scan if the sheet is a negative. The scan is the durable form of the picture. The sheet is not.
5. Choose an enclosure photo-safe to ISO 18902, which requires passing the Photographic Activity Test, ISO 18916. Never unprocessed woodpulp paper, glassine or PVC, no coloured paper, nothing rubber-based, adhesive, clipped or banded against the sheet. A pH test alone is not photo-safe.
6. Slide the sheet in emulsion side away from the seam, and use a side-seamed envelope rather than a centre-seamed one: envelope adhesive stains and fades a silver image.
7. Put that enclosure inside the light-tight outer and tape the outer shut. Box, tape and drawer then touch the enclosure, never the print.
8. Write on the outside: UNFIXED PRINT - DO NOT OPEN IN LIGHT, the date and time sealed, and where the log entry lives.

Shelving it

9. Store it cool, dry and dark: not a damp cellar, not an attic, not an unheated shed. The conservation bracket — 30 to 50 per cent relative humidity without cycling more than five points a day, 18 °C or below, mould above about 60 per cent — is written for processed collections, so take it as a ceiling rather than a promise.
10. Keep it away from untreated wood, fresh paint and varnish, which give off peroxides, and from anywhere sulfide toning is done: hydrogen sulfide fogs unexposed paper and oxidises unprotected silver images. The incompatibility list governs where photographic material is stored.
11. Shelve it apart from finished work, by storage rotation, so nobody mounts an unfixed sheet in a frame.
12. Write the storage line while the package is in your hand.

Opening it, and closing the file

13. Open only in the dim room, and only for as long as you must. Exposure is cumulative and every inspection is spent from the same account.
14. Record the opening before you re-seal — date, how long, what light — then re-seal with a new date on the outside.
15. To fix it, scan it again first, then follow print processing with the bath Part XI specifies for a print-out image: plain or slightly alkaline hypo, not an acid fixer.
16. If it is to stay unfixed, write that on the label and the log line, and treat the scan as the work.

How you know it worked

• Anyone opening the drawer can tell the sheet is unfixed without opening the package.
• Nothing acidic, coloured, rubber, adhesive or PVC touches the print; the log names the enclosure.
• A scan exists, filed somewhere other than that drawer.
• The outside carries the sealing date and every opening since.
• Opened after weeks in the dark, the sheet looks as it did when sealed.

If a step fails

Step 1, the room will not go dim enough. Seal inside a changing bag: label the sheet first, then load and tape the outer by feel.

Step 2, the pencil will not mark. The back is damp or greasy — dry it. Never substitute ink: label the enclosure and cross-reference the log.

Step 4, there is no scanner. Photograph it flat in even light beside a grey scale, at the same distance every time, and say so in the log. The record’s job is comparison.

Step 5, no photo-safe enclosure is to hand. Use the paper’s own black bag inside its box: it is light-tight and is what the sheet has lain against all along. Record it as untested, since it has not passed the PAT and the substitution must be visible when a tested one arrives.

Step 7, the outer looks opaque but you are not sure. Test it rather than trust it: seal a fresh offcut with a coin on it, leave it a day where the package will live, then look.

Step 9, the only space available cycles in temperature. Cycling does more damage than a steady warm room. Take the steadiest place in the house over the coldest, and write down which.

Step 13, it was opened in room light by mistake. Treat it as an exposure, not an accident: write the time and the light, scan it again at once, and expect the highlights to have moved.

Step 15, the image is already too dark to read. Scan it and keep it. Do not fix it hoping to recover it: fixing takes density out of a print-out image and gives none back.

What to record

One line per sheet, keyed to the identifier on its exposure log row: date and time sealed, the enclosure and whether it is photo-safe, where the package is stored, and where the scan lives. Then a dated line for every opening — how long, under what light — since those lines are the sheet’s exposure history and the only reason a later comparison means anything. Close with its fate: fixed on a date, or kept unfixed on purpose.