At that time we had all been used to working in black and white and knew that our portraits and wedding albums would last for decadesÉ provided we washed our prints properly, and did not use an electric dryer with a retaining blanket that was steeped in fixer due to its frequent use for press prints which had only been given a perfunctory rinse. In the case of sepia toned pictures, we knew they might last for centuries.
We feared then that colour prints displayed on the wall of the family home would fade; badly positioned, they would do so within weeks. A glance in any estate agent's window confirmed this.
Hence whenever two or three photographers gathered, fading was soon a hot topic of conversation. Nowadays, you rarely hear it mentioned. Furthermore the majority of today's practising social photographers have never personally made a traditional black and white print. If they want a sepia one it will probably be made on colour paper! So if fading is no longer the concern it was, why not?
The stability of the prints is now far better than it used to be, although a print displayed in a window still shows pretty rapid signs of colour change. The current attitude of people in general is another reason. We tend to live in a throwaway society that only expects items to last a few years. While ten years might be regarded as more than ample life for a refrigerator or television set, a portrait that survives longer than this might well be considered satisfactory.
One of the questions we used to agonise over was: do we tell the client that the expensive portrait will eventually fade to nothing, or do we say nothing about it so as to not start alarm bells ringing when they have just paid out their money?
It is interesting to look through a collection of prints made over the last three decades. The black and white (or warm tone on Kodak Bromesko and similar papers) are as immaculate as they were at their birth. The colour prints vary: in some cases there would appear to be a little overall fading, but it may well be that we did not print them anything like as rich and deep as we would do today.
Other prints, certainly not as old, show horrible colour changes and the unevenness of this suggests insufficient (cold water) washing. In the latter case prints stored in the dark have suffered as much as displayed examples. Generally speaking, the portraits which have been on the walls of my home for ten, fifteen or even twenty years show only slight deterioration and are acceptable even to my critical eye; prints kept in an album or drawer remain excellent.
But what, if anything, has happened to the original negative? We are constantly reading in magazines of people's collections of Agfacolor and Ektachrome transparencies having deteriorated beyond use while Kodachromes remain good. So whither the colour negative? I am sure they must have lost density in one or more layers, but the occasional reprinting of old negatives in order to replace faded prints has not been a problem. Admittedly the prints may not look like today's prints from new negatives, but in the type of work I am involved with - portraiture - neutrality and colour accuracy has never been an issue anyway.
A few years ago I had a chat with a member of Kodak staff and he firmly took the view that a member of the public, in buying a portrait, was only purchasing a temporary piece of wall decor, and that to bin it after a few years was reasonable. It would be time for an updated portrait anyway. Sittings should take place frequently. All portrait photographers would say 'amen!' to that, but at the same time, we like to think that some of our work will live on and be 'discovered' by a future generation putting together a family history. From my mother I inherited a case full of black and white family portraits taken over several generations and they are mostly in very good condition.
As a profession we place great emphasis on selling wall portraits since these make us most money. However it is my belief that within one generation many of these will become trashed, not only because they will have deteriorated which they may well have, but because as families evolve, the young will not find wall space for them. A set of small prints, mounted in an album or even loose in mounts in a drawer, should not fade and are a readily retained possession as families move on. The small attach case I inherited contained hundreds of carte-de-visite portraits and continues to do. It is much more valuable to me as an archive than an equivalent number of wall portraits would have been.
As a portrait photographer I am happy to sell my wall portraits because they will give immediate daily pleasure. At the same time I like my clients to have a set of small prints because kept in the dark, I know that they will live on and give equal pleasure to future generations.
For the important civic portrait intended for display over decades,
there is still a good argument to be made for black and white. Our local
town hall has a set of hand coloured mayoral portraits on the walls going
back sixty years, still in excellent condition. The direct colour ones I
took twenty odd years ago have long since been relegated to a basement or
worse.
The 35 year old Ektacolor print (left) still shows remarkably good colour. It is
weak but I suspect that is more or less how I originally printed it. A
note on the back indicates it was in a showcase for a few weeks in 1963 so
that cannot have helped. It has been stored variously in a damp
cellar/hot attic for most of its life. The base colour of the paper has
yellowed somewhat, but then it wasn't very white in those days anyway.
To show how well colour can be restored, editor David Kilpatrick has adjusted the image on the right using Photoshop (a very simple 'Levels' command). If the negative is missing, this is an easy solution to customer complaints of fading.
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