While on vacation in the Philippines visiting my wife's family, I was
shown the family photo album. This wasn't the "current events" album,
but rather a photo album that started with my wife's great grandfather
around the turn of the century and continued into the 1960's.
The album was pretty interesting; it had a lot of hand written and
typewritten letters between relatives, also dating back to turn of the
century. Particularly interesting were the letters and newspaper
clippings that found their way into the album around the time of WW-I
and WW-II; stories of relatives being beheaded by invasion forces, and
so on.
Something else caught my attention though. Some of the prints in the
album, mostly ones from the 1910's through 1930's were exhibiting what
I've determined through google research to be "silvering out". Though
these prints were still very 'legible', their exposed areas (in a
photographic sense) were shiny like chrome. They were printed on white
paper, and had no color cast. Pictures taken at earlier dates were not
affected, and mostly those taken after the mid-30's were also not
affected, although I think I recall seeing a few from the '40's that
were. In some cases, even prints that have sat side by side on the same
page in this album for the past 70 years, one might be "silvered out"
and one might not. I suspect that they came from different developing
facilities, or were a different brand of paper.
Anyway, I'm curious if anyone else here has seen this, and if my
description and diagnosis are reasonably accurate. I did see some
examples of silvering out online. The prints in my wife's father's
album seem cleaner looking though. Maybe because they're entirely
silvered out. There is very little highlight detail, but the midrange
and shadow detail is prominantly shiny.
Can these sorts of things be restored? The album seems like a bit of a
family treasure, though I don't think her family realizes what they've
got. The album has other problems too; the backing paper probably isn't
acid-free, glues and adhesives probably haven't been too photo friendly,
newspaper clippings and letters are beginning to tatter, etc. But for
the most part it's in better shape than one would expect of an album
whos contents are between 40 and 110 years old.
- OT: Silvering-out of old photos David Oswald
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