Preliminary photographs and improved positives: discovering the New York Public Library’s Arctic Exploration album

• Published in: Heritage Science
• Main Authors: Elena Basso, Federica Pozzi, Jessica Keister, Elizabeth Cronin
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: SpringerOpen 2021
• Subjects: Expeditionary photography; Photographs; Arctic expeditions; Late 19th and early 20th centuries; Silver‐gelatin paper; Silver halides; art; info; Arctic; Fors; Franz Josef Land; Harmsworth
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1186/s40494-021-00506-3; https://doaj.org/article/2adf6a0725544949b9436760b43ed31f

Abstract In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, original photographs were sent to publishers so that they could be reproduced in print. The photographs often needed to be reworked with overpainting and masking, and such modifications were especially necessary for low-contrast photographs to be reproduced as a letterpress halftone. As altered objects, many of these marked-up photographs were simply discarded after use. An album at The New York Public Library, however, contains 157 such photographs, all relating to the Jackson–Harmsworth expedition to Franz Josef Land, from 1894 to 1897. Received as gifts from publishers, the photographs are heavily retouched with overpainting and masking, as well as drawn and collaged elements. The intense level of overpainting on many of the photographs, but not on others, raised questions about their production and alteration. Jackson’s accounts attested to his practice of developing and printing photographs on site, testing different materials and techniques—including platino-bromide and silver-gelatin papers—to overcome the harsh environmental conditions. In this context, sixteen photographs from the album were analyzed through a combination of non-invasive and micro-invasive techniques, including X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectroscopy, fiber optics reflectance spectroscopy (FORS), Raman and Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopies, and scanning electron microscopy with energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (SEM/EDS). This analytical campaign aimed to evaluate the possible residual presence of silver halides in any of the preliminary and improved photographs. The detection of these compounds would be one of several factors supporting a hypothesis that some of the photographs in the album were indeed printed on site, in the Arctic, and, as a result, may have been impacted by the extreme environment. Additional goals of the study included the evaluation of the extent of retouching, providing a full characterization of the pigments and dyes used in overpainted prints, ...