Want to keep those Christmas photos safe for generations? Then put the originals away and make lots of copies, experts say.
City residents will take hundreds of snapshots this month as they celebrate the holidays, only to be dismayed years later when their photos are cracked, faded or infested with mould.
And it will largely be their own fault, says Terry O’Riordan, the audio-visual conservator at the Provincial Archives of Alberta.
“The biggest predator against people’s family photos is people themselves,” he said.
The provincial archives have many photos on file of Alberta’s history, some of which date from the 1880s.
Oddly enough, the older a photo is, the easier it tends to be to preserve, O’Riordan says. That’s because pre-1900s photos were printed on high-quality paper and involved just one light-sensitive chemical – silver halide. Stored in an acid free-envelope under cool, dry conditions, these black and white snapshots will remain stable essentially forever.
“The challenges really begin to arise as we get into the 1960s,” he continues, and colour photography. Colour prints involve scores of dyes and chemicals, many of which break down over time. Your colours fade and your photos looked washed out.
“There’s very little you can do to arrest colour loss in a photograph,” O’Riordan says.
Broadly speaking, the main threats to photos are acid, light, heat, moisture and people.
Photos are printed on paper, which disintegrates over time due to the acid in it, O’Riordan says. Light degrades the dyes in colour photos, causing them to fade, while heat and moisture promote mould that eats paper.
As for people, they tend to do weird, destructive things to their photos, many of which are one-of-a-kind documents: write on them, roll them up and cut them up for scrapbooks.
One of the worst things you can do is stick your photos in a typical sticky-backed photo album, O’Riordan says.
“That’s glue, and glue’s pretty acidic,” he says.
Not only will the glue disintegrate your photos, but it can also keep you from removing the photo from the album at all.
The best way to protect your photos is to store them in an acid-free paper envelope in an acid-free box in a cool, dry, dark place, O’Riordan says – and certainly not under the sink or by the furnace.
If you put more than one picture in an envelope, put them face-to-face so that the backs don’t scratch the images.
“Copying is also a really good strategy,” he continues.
The archives regularly do high-resolution scans and prints of its photos to limit the amount of handling its originals undergo.
“If you want to have a lovely framed photo of the family, it’s best to put a copy on the wall.”
And if you really want to use a traditional album, O’Riordan says, use one with non-sticky photo corners. Those will hold your pictures in place without dangerous glue.
Alex Iskander of ABI Photography recommends putting backups of your digital photos on a memory stick in a safety deposit box. You can then print out the copies professionally; many websites let you make custom albums online, letting you sidestep the whole “sticky back” problem.
Use caution when putting your photos in a frame, he continues, as pre-made frames usually have acidic cardboard backs. He recommends getting a custom frame with an acid-free back and UV-blocking glass.
Photos give us insight into the past and help put other records into context, O’Riordan says.
“A story of great-aunt Marjory is wonderful,” he says, but a photo of her is even better. “It helps confirm your understanding of the past and brings a piece of it into the present.”
