Yard-long photo framing and restoration

[MPage]

Does anyone here have experience with panoramic photos which have been damaged, or has anyone here taken one to a professional picture framer?

 

I recently obtained a damaged yard-long and assumed I would find a suitable frame and just put it in there myself, but I'm wondering if these chain stores such as "Fast Frame" are worth it. Seems to me there's not too much you can do besides press it in there.

[AAF_Collection]

This is a question I've been meaning to ask too(though I'm in the UK so sources may differ) as I have a yard long which has been rolled and then squashed,causing the photo to crack into sections. The advice I received from a photograph restorer here was to have the original professionally restored and a high quality copy made at the same time. The cost was rather a lot,around £200 IIRC so having the work done is still on my to do list.

 

Matt

[The Meatcan]

Does anyone here have experience with panoramic photos which have been damaged, or has anyone here taken one to a professional picture framer?

 

I recently obtained a damaged yard-long and assumed I would find a suitable frame and just put it in there myself, but I'm wondering if these chain stores such as "Fast Frame" are worth it. Seems to me there's not too much you can do besides press it in there.

MPage - what sort of damage do you have on your photo? Is it something more than just rolled up and squashed? If so, you may have to go to a professional photographic restorer. But if not, there is hope! There are several threads on The Forum detailing simple do-it-yourself methods that do work to unroll a yard-long and keep it relatively flat. Look under the "Preservation" subforum or contact a professional curator member here on The Forum, like Bluehawk.

Matt - same goes for you and your photo too.

Good luck and let us know how it turns out!

Terry

[Bluehawk]

Thanks Meatcan...

 

The framing question is fairly simple in that almost any frame shop can do it including Fast Frame, Hobby Lobby etc. Their prices will be somewhat lower than a private framer's. The advantage of private framing is that they are a normally a lot more sensitive to correct archival procedures, and so you pay extra for that.

 

It's always slightly dangerous to recommend anything without laying hands on or at least seeing the photos. But, here are some general guidelines. I don't know the age of the photos, so that is another question.

 

I guess these situations require a prior decision. To wit, do you want to PRESERVE or CONSERVE... and what is the current condition of the artifact; that is to say what actually caused the damage.

 

Preservation = stabilizing

Conservation = repairing

 

Preservation would involve relaxing the paper fibers.

 

You want to make a sandwich. Put a piece of smooth cloth (cotton works well) larger than the photo down on a smooth completely flat surface first. Then comes the photo face down (you may have to use something the hold it down at each end). Now spritz the back of the photo LIGHTLY and uniformly (no puddles). Next comes another piece of smooth cloth larger than the photo. Then on top of that will come your flattening board larger than the photo. Then will come some weights (books work well) covering the board end to end and side to side. Leave it like that for a day or so, or until fully dry. Then evaluate whether you want to repeat the process.

 

Organic papers, i.e. paper without any polymers in them, will usually respond well to that method.

 

Cracks in the emulsion side (i.e. the side with the image on it) will remain but shouldn't be as severe, as would any missing pieces of the support (i.e. the paper). Just letting them be there as is can be a sensible interim choice. So, next step would be to frame the piece so that this doesn't happen again, and so that whatever is left of the original can be PRESERVED.

 

CONSERVATION, on the other hand can quickly become rather expensive, and (in other words) cost far more than most yard-long photographs are worth in dollars. Even that method will not yield a "perfect" photo in the end, but it will certainly look a lot nicer. Conservation will "reverse" most kinds of damage without causing further damage, and will make the piece cosmetically better. Qualified paper or photo conservators can be found by contacting a regional museum, the larger the better usually.

 

As usual with objects of this kind, the overriding choice involves how much the photo means to you or someone else, historically and/or monetarily.

 

(Example from Charleston Archive at CCPL):

http://charlestonarchive.org/2008/08/18/tuxbury/

[MPage]

Thank you for the responses.

 

Here's a pic, however it's difficult to show the damage on the ends - under the plates used as weights, there are tears.

 

 

[carbinephalen]

I got my grandfather's yard long framed at Hobby Lobby. They cut a special matting for it and all. Wasn't ridiculously priced and I am VERY happy with it. :thumbsup:

[Bluehawk]

Thank you for the responses.

 

Here's a pic, however it's difficult to show the damage on the ends - under the plates used as weights, there are tears.

Looks like its nearly broken in two at that right end, but I wouldn't be afraid to use the humidifying method to flatten it even so. It isn't an especially old photo, so that bodes well.

 

There are several different ways to do the flattening process, some of which are excessively elaborate in my opinion.

 

But the one I outlined above will work pretty well for you, I'm confident in this case. Just go easy and lightly when spraying the water on it; not too much at one go. Better to be conservative and repeat the procedure more than once than to sop it and create risk to the emulsion.

 

As to the tears you mention - in the process of laying it down in your sandwich, if you will lightly moisten the torn places and attempt to smooth them down as you go, then they ought to stay in place back where they belong. Smoothing tears or cracks down, you can use something like a popsicle stick or even a kitchen spoon or similar flat instrument to kind of gently press the fibers back together. Paper, after all, is nothing more than organic fiber suspended in water and then dried out under pressure. If after taking the sandwich apart when dried you find that you have made a mistake, you have only to repeat the process. Critical to this is obtaining an overall moistening so that there aren't any areas of the back left dry which might cure differentially.

 

In no event use tape of any kind. There is a way to correctly adhere severe breaks in the surface, but that would require conservation methods and materials you probably wouldn't want or need to purchase. I believe you should obtain a very satisfactory result using the flattening method suggested without any extravagant efforts.

 

Getting it framed afterward is going to be very important if you hope to save it more or less intact.

[Bluehawk]

p.s.

 

"As to the tears you mention - in the process of laying it down in your sandwich, if you will lightly moisten the torn places and attempt to smooth them down as you go, then they ought to stay in place back where they belong."

 

> PLEASE don't attempt this with those big creases/cracks though!

 

I'm afraid that moisture without flattening pressure might just loosen what's left of the connecting fibers enough to have them come totally apart on you!

 

You'll be better off with letting those cracks go as is and see what happens after a general overall light moistening of the entire reverse side (aka the back) - but the little tears can be relaxed one by one without risk.

[MPage]

p.s.

 

"As to the tears you mention - in the process of laying it down in your sandwich, if you will lightly moisten the torn places and attempt to smooth them down as you go, then they ought to stay in place back where they belong."

 

> PLEASE don't attempt this with those big creases/cracks though!

 

I'm afraid that moisture without flattening pressure might just loosen what's left of the connecting fibers enough to have them come totally apart on you!

 

You'll be better off with letting those cracks go as is and see what happens after a general overall light moistening of the entire reverse side (aka the back) - but the little tears can be relaxed one by one without risk.

 

Thank you for all the great pointers. I'm hesitant, though, about getting this thing wet. Is it effective to merely flatten the photo while dry?

[Bluehawk]

Thank you for all the great pointers. I'm hesitant, though, about getting this thing wet. Is it effective to merely flatten the photo while dry?

Good question.

 

What a conservator would do to flatten it is to lightly apply water on the back and then make the sandwich. They have sophisticated vacuum tables to create pressure with, but the way I outlined is almost as good and is a whole lot simpler/cheaper and very closely resembles the kind of "sandwich" they would be using.

 

So, answer is, No. there is not a way to flatten the photo without moistening the back. You could keep it under a 500 pound weight for seven years, but without any humidity it would come out practically as rolled as it is today and in a short time would probably return to its present condition.

 

You are NOT going to be getting it "wet" so to speak. You are going to just very lightly spray a mist of water over the entire backside, and then compress it until it dries.

 

Unless you can relax the paper fiber, then it will stay dry and pretty much as rolled up funky as it is right now.

 

Paper is, as mentioned, nothing more than tiny organic fibers soaked in water, poured on to a flat screen in solution and then dried out under pressure. The finer the fiber and greater the pressure, the smoother the paper.

 

So, all you are doing is to bring back a very very small amount of one component part, i.e. water, which microscopically softens and swells the fibers, thus allowing them to "relax" and be susceptible to rearrangement - i.e. flattening.

 

Not to worry, I've done this 50 times. Just follow the method I described exactly:

 

"You want to make a sandwich. Put a piece of smooth cloth (cotton works well) larger than the photo down on a smooth completely flat surface first. Then comes the photo face down (you may have to use something the hold it down at each end). Now spritz the back of the photo LIGHTLY and uniformly (no puddles). Next comes another piece of smooth cloth larger than the photo. Then on top of that will come your flattening board larger than the photo. Then will come some weights (books work well) covering the board end to end and side to side. Leave it like that for a day or so, or until fully dry. Then evaluate whether you want to repeat the process."

[willysmb44]

Thanks for the info. I’ve never tried to ‘unroll’ one of these photos. I have a pre-war 180th infantry photo (yes, Bill Mauldin’s unit, at the time he was with them) that I really want to frame and I’ll be using the water and press method to get it flat. Part of the photo is shown here, I scanned the section that included K company (Mauldin’s company). Mauldin biographer Todd Depastino and I have a disagreement about this photo, he thinks Bill is in the photo. I think Bill would have ducked out of this as setting up a photo like this takes forever and nobody would want to do that in the hot sun if they could get away with it.

 

[Bluehawk]

Thanks for the info. I’ve never tried to ‘unroll’ one of these photos. I have a pre-war 180th infantry photo (yes, Bill Mauldin’s unit, at the time he was with them) that I really want to frame and I’ll be using the water and press method to get it flat. Part of the photo is shown here, I scanned the section that included K company (Mauldin’s company). Mauldin biographer Todd Depastino and I have a disagreement about this photo, he thinks Bill is in the photo. I think Bill would have ducked out of this as setting up a photo like this takes forever and nobody would want to do that in the hot sun if they could get away with it.

You ought to get a good result from the effort on that one. The earlier the photo then the less likely will be presence of polymers in the paper, which means that you'll be dealing with organic fiber, easier to relax that than late 20th century materials can be.

 

Papers from the earliest years of photography may require some extra careful attention, as would any photo that had been "hand tinted" because those pigments are water based and would probably bleed/run. Obviously if there are any paper labels or inscriptions on the back written in ink pen then I'd protect those areas with, for example, a piece of saran wrap cut to fit the shape, just in case.

 

Other than those cautions, that's a simple safe way to get those rolled images into frames and preserved.

 

Hopefully some of you guys will come back afterward and post photos of your yard longs in frames.

[MAW]

The way I have done this in the past is to take a bucket...fill it 1/2 way with hot steaming water....I cut a piece of chicken wire square so that it would fit inside the bucket, but "wedge" in there...not fall to the bottom....in effect making a shelf.

 

Lay the rolled up yard long on the wire...cover the bucket with something to let the steam build up. Check it after a couple of minutes...if the paper is regaining its flexibility, unroll the yardlong some more and do the next section of it.

 

Works like a charm. The only thing you have to be careful of is not to let condensation build up and then have water drip onto the photo itself. As long as you keep an eye on it, it's not a problem.

 

After the whole thing is steamed....and dry....lay it out flat and put some books or something heavy on it. You are good to go.

[tsakers85]

Thanks for the info. I’ve never tried to ‘unroll’ one of these photos. I have a pre-war 180th infantry photo (yes, Bill Mauldin’s unit, at the time he was with them) that I really want to frame and I’ll be using the water and press method to get it flat. Part of the photo is shown here, I scanned the section that included K company (Mauldin’s company). Mauldin biographer Todd Depastino and I have a disagreement about this photo, he thinks Bill is in the photo. I think Bill would have ducked out of this as setting up a photo like this takes forever and nobody would want to do that in the hot sun if they could get away with it.

 

 

Lee,

 

I'm late to the dance here, but is that photo at Camp Barkley in 1941? If so, I have a copy of the photo as well. Just had it framed at Hobby Lobby and I was very impressed with the results! I also have a photo of H Company taken at Barkley in 1941.

[MPage]

Lee,

 

I'm late to the dance here, but is that photo at Camp Barkley in 1941? If so, I have a copy of the photo as well. Just had it framed at Hobby Lobby and I was very impressed with the results! I also have a photo of H Company taken at Barkley in 1941.

 

Did the photo have any damage or curling that needed to be taken care of?

[tsakers85]

Did the photo have any damage or curling that needed to be taken care of?

 

No, fortunately I was removing both pieces from existing frames.