Wednesday, January 1, 2014

Silver Water

Columbia, c. 1910




It happens that glass-plate negatives survive the risk of cracking and breaking, that chemicals composing the lights and darks are kept stable, that prints are made and preserved, that scans are created and published  all these eventualities are possible, but when they happen together it still seems unlikely.

Cornell, 1911

Cornell, 1912





Varsity crew at Cornell in 1911 and again in 1912, with mostly the same faces aging by one small increment. Other years with other faces were lost or never made. Today, photographic technology is no longer capable of rendering these same tender silvers and sables. True, an artist like Sally Mann can revive glass-plate processes  yet her example only proves the rule that what survives from the past survives mostly by accident and might much more likely have perished.

Cornell, 1911

Cornell, 1911


Penn, 1914

Penn, 1914

Stanford, c.1910
Stanford, c.1910

Yale, 1913

Syracuse, 1908

Syracuse, 1908

Syracuse, 1914

Yale, 1910

At the turn of the 20th century people had only learned recently to believe in the integrity of photographic facts. That surely is one reason these long-preserved facts are infinitely more vivid than present-day photographic facts.