[Leica] Image preservation - Film doesn't last forever.

[benedenia at gmail.com (Marty Deveney)]

They're predators, not parasites, but it's unsurprising.

Nothing lasts forever.  On every new thing there lies already the shadow of
annihilation.

Marty


On Sunday, 9 March 2014, <lrzeitlin at aol.com> wrote:

>  Silver images don't last forever. "Daguerreotypes may seem frozen in
> time, but their surfaces are living landscapes. Popular in the middle of
> the 19th century, daguerreotypes were a precursor to photography created by
> layering silver on a copper plate and exposing it to light and various
> chemicals, often including gold. Although daguerreotypes like the one above
> on the left are famous for capturing vivid portraits of their subjects,
> many have been damaged in the 150 years since they were made. The images
> can become fuzzy or faded, or even be wiped away by overzealous cleaners.
> Hoping to gain some insight into how to restore these delicate objects, a
> team of researchers used a scanning electron microscope to zoom in on the
> surface of daguerreotypes--and discovered life. It turns out daguerreotypes
> have parasites. The growths appear to be mostly fungi, though some of the
> life forms remain unidentified. As they eat and digest the metals of a
> daguerreotype, they excrete gold and silver nanoparticles that disfigure
> the image."  SCIENCE, Feb 14, 2014." - Larry Z
>
>
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