1/1/2024 0 Comments Printlife photobook publisher![]() I noticed at that time that the pictures which appeared to have survived in the best shape were black-and-white prints from the 1930s and '40s in folders-paper board folders, stiff and luxuriously thick but with a soft surface, of the sort once used by high-society portrait photographers to present their work to their clients. (Also an old drafting pen set.) I found pictures of this baby as an adult, too, and pictures of her babies. There was a trunk of antique china someone thought had gone out of fashion by maybe 1915 a set of silver spoons that had come over from England in the expedition financed by Lord Baltimore in 1750 old dog-eared first editions of various books by Mark Twain (my great-great-grandfather had been a fan)-and thousands and thousands of photographs, going all the way back to 1840s Daguerreotypes.įamily Daguerreotype, c. There were thousands of old things somebody once thought too valuable to throw away. Not only were there lots of my grandparents' things in it, dating from the '20s, but a lot of the contents of my great-grandparents' attic had been deposited there, too. My grandmother's deceased sister had been a flapper in the '20s, a girl straight out of The Great Gatsby (she died at 22 of sin and bathtub gin), and they still had a lot of her clothes in their attic. (My apologies if you've heard this story before.) During a 1980s visit to my grandparents, I spent three days in their attic, a treasure trove I still occasionally have dreams about all these years later. Or consider my experience when I first thought of all these issues. Voilà: The difference between "permanence" and survival, in a nutshell. Ten years later, your new spouse finds the photograph of your now ex-spouse and, in a huff, throws it in the trash. ![]() You take every reasonable effort to adhere to archival best practices: you use tested materials (pigment-based ink, paper of the correct pH), you have it framed by a framer you know is well versed in museum practices, you keep it away from direct sunlight, etc., etc. Well, let's say you make a print of a beautiful picture of your spouse. In the days of black-and-white darkroom prints, it was always a topic of lively interest, to the point that people argued spiritedly (and seemingly endlessly, although the end eventually came) over the efficacy of different types of print washer designs.Īlthough I'm not uniniterested in this aspect of print preservation, I find I'm much more interested in an entirely different area of print life expectancy (LE)-you might even call it "picture LE"-: survivability.Īnd what do I mean by "survivability," and what's the distinction between it and what people call "preservation" or "print longevity" or "permanence"? ![]() It's an issue in framing inkjet prints, but it's been an area of concern among photographers for a long time. The introductory chapter texts are followed by spreads and images from over 200 books, which provide the central means of telling the history of the photobook.I've noticed over the years that photographers and photography enthusiasts by and large are interested mainly in the technical aspects of print preservation: materials, deterioration, degradation by environmental factors, light-fading and color fastness, and so on. It covers key themes including the globalization of photographic culture, the personalization of photobooks, the self-publishing boom and the new 'layered' photobook approach. ![]() The third and final volume in Phaidon’s acclaimed Photobook series, hailed as ‘the most important contribution to the field since modern histories of photography began to appear in the early 20th century.įollowing the success of volumes 1 and 2 of The Photobook: A History, this is the third volume bringing this study of the photobook fully up to date, with specific exploration of the contemporary, postwar photobook.
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