Kilka słów o czarno-białych negatywach fotograficznych i możliwościach ich identyfikacji

Abstract

A FEW WORDS ON BLACK-AND-WHITE PHOTOGRAPHIC NEGATIVES AND THE POSSIBILITIES OF THEIR IDENTIfiCATION

The subject of the present deliberations are blackand- white photographic negatives – a world that is currently becoming a thing of the past due to the vanishing of traditional silver halide photography. Negatives are not the kind of pictures that would satisfy man’s immemorial yearning for capturing the image of the world as it is perceived by the human eye, which explains why they were usually less popular with the audience than the positive images. Perhaps the process of inventing photography could have been shorter, had it not been for that irresistible desire to directly create a positive image. It was not until William Henry Fox Talbot who, in 1841, accepted the indirect path and took out a patent on the system of obtaining a positive image through the copying of the negative image. But it is, in fact, the negative that constitutes the primary, historic and authentic record of reality. It has higher resolution and tonal capacity than the positive print, therefore, it contains a lot more information. It is not only a source of knowledge about bygone times in the context of what it represents, but also tells us how, and through the use of what methods the given image was registered and made legible, i.e. it bears an authentic testimony to the technology and photographic technique of a given era. Negatives usually remained in the possession of the photographer, and over time they would make coherent collections which today reveal the technique and personality of the author better than single prints would. Therefore, we encourage anyone to take care of the collections of negatives that may still be preserved in family libraries or the archives of photographic studios and help them survive. The fundamental step on this path is to realize that negatives are, first and foremost, material objects of specic structure that needs to be identied in order to determine the optimal conditions of storage and select the appropriate conservation methods. Three chapters of the present paper outline the history of black-and-white negatives formed on various materials: paper, glass, and plastic, and for the latter two groups basic information on the popular, simple methods of identication thereof have been provided. Chapter four presents the author’s contribution to the discussion on how museums nowadays should possibly identify the techniques of the most popular negatives, i.e. those formed on solid (glass) supports, and in the case of negatives formed on floppy supports – how the identification of the kind of plastic used in them should be carried out. We believe that rapid technological progress in the field of photography ought to be reflected in the technological advancement of the identification of negatives. We encourage the use of state-of-the-art tools of analytical chemistry in order to verify the evaluations which hitherto have mostly been based on intuitive premises.