Stability of Carbon Prints

I have a story that some of you may find interesting, even though it
makes me look rather slow.

The story has its genesis in a workshop/exhibition I did last October
at the IFSAK Bienal of Photography. For the exhibition I sent over
some 20-25 prints, mostly carbons but a few carbons. Before returning
home I traded prints with a couple of photographers, including Loris
Medici who posts her from time to time, and a fellow named Bulent,
who does beautiful silver B&W work.

OK, the prints were shipped back to me and arrived in time for me to
use some of them in an exhibition in Toronto in December. When I
started going through the mounted prints I noticed that a few of them
had a very strange and unusual yellow-orange cast in the highlights,
where there should have been a neutral tone. This really concerned
me, because as we all know, carbon prints are absolutely stable. So I
begin to conjecture on what kind of noxious toxins must be in the
atmosphere of Istanbul to cause this kind of degradation.

Today I was putting together a collection of prints for a local
exhibition and pulled out some of the prints that had been in
Istanbul, and again noticed the yellow-orange cast, which was much
worse than in December. Now I am really pulling my hair out on this
because I put a lot of emphasis in my work on archival processing,
and hell, with carbon that should be a snap anyway.

Then I took a closer look, and what I found was that the prints I
thought were carbons were actually mock-up prints, color inkjets no
doubt, that were placed in the original mattes when the prints I
traded were removed. Why this was done I have no clue but the fact
that I did not know about it sure caused a fair amount of
consternation at this end.

Sandy King
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Received on Mon May 28 14:17:48 2007