The preservation of nineteenth century albumen prints is of great concern to collection managers and to conservators of photographic materials. In a study of the interaction of water with albumen photographs, experiments were carried out in the ESEM to follow the real time effects of water on the prints. The experiments were designed to observe the effects of a range of relative humidities and liquid water on samples of expendable historic albumen prints, utilizing the advantages of imaging in the presence of water vapor.
All albumen photographs exhibit a fine network of cracks in the albumen protein layer.
Average crack width is approximately 10 m. Full text version is available online. Copyright 1999 Paul Messier . All rights reserved.