Galway Coastal, Pictures of the Week, 22 June 12

Kelp and Boat, Galway Bay

While I was looking in the corner which I've designated as my store-room, for a box of stage props (hats are needed for a script-in-hand performance of my new play), I found an old album of photographs of the West of Ireland, not far from the City of Galway. 

These are black and white pictues and they are slowly fading, disappearing. The back of each print is covered in yellow/brown blotches and even the album page behind each photograph is discoloured and stained with the developing solution which is still reacting, slowly, to exposure to light.

Making Tracks...

The effect this deterioration has had on the photographs is in places like sepia toning, although they were never intended to be sepia toned. I know this for a fact because these photos are not 100 years old, but 26 years old.

They were probably the last images which I shot on Black and White film and at the time I didn't have access to a darkroom, so I took them to a photographic processing lab to be developed and printed.

These pictures of sea, sky, boats, rocks and tracks are not becoming discoloured because they are old.  Photographs, as far as we have experienced to date, can last at least 130 years without serious deterioration. How long will digital files last, I wonder?

My 1986 photos of the Galway coast are deteriorating because they were badly processed, improperly fixed. Anyone who has printed their own black and white photos will know what I mean.

None of the black and white pictures I've printed for myself over the years are suffering in this way, although some are 16+ years older than these Galway pictures. I was taught to  make certain my prints were very well fixed and then thoroughly washed, to remove all trace of the processing chemicals which if left can lead to deterioration. I don't know what has happened to the original Galway negatives, but considering the poor quality of the processing the prints suffered I expect they will be less than perfect too, if I ever find them. Is it too late to demand compensation from the company who processed them?

Stone, Sea, Sky

Actually I haven't named the processors because I wouldn't want  any compensation, even if a claim were feasible, I like these pictures more now than when I originally shot them.

I've begun to make digital copies of the images before they deteriorate further, which I know they will. I could use techniques to 'improve' the these pictures but their present less than perfect state lends the imagery a mythic air which I could never have anticipated originally. I love them, my own Galway Coastal Myth.

Ruined Cottage, Galway Bay