First of all, its still wax. In the case of leather and wood, they are
already organic and interesting food for all sorts of bugs so the addition
of wax makes little difference and, in fact, helps preserve since it
keeps wood and especially leather from drying out. Leather book bindings
are not considered archival.
But back to the original question. I did not mean to suggest one should
never do certain things to prints. I was presenting the archivists point
of view. We know that everything is deteriorating at different rates. We
try to avaoid anything that speeds up the rate of deterioration and store
materials in an environment that will slow the rate down. Judy says that
a gum print, made with archival pigment on archival paper is as long lasting
as a platinium print. Two points: 1. the key phrase is "archival pigment>"
I would be concerned about anything other than black pigment. 2. I think
the residual gum might be of interest to beasties. Therefore, I would still
vote for platinium on archival paper as "most archival." The point is,
weather you have a carbon print or platinium print, that is, a nice, long-
lasting print, I question the sense of putting gelatin or wax or something
else on it that would contribute to speeding up its deterioration. If we
are talking about a silver print, its already got a lot of gelatin in it,
so a little more would not likely make much difference. I don't know about
wax. Let me put it this way. If you owned an original Ansel Adams print,
would you wax it? A competent archivist would not. Now having said all
that, the question of what the artist (oops, I mean photographer) should
do is best left to his/her judgement. Maybe you don't care how long your
prints last. Matbe its not as important as how they look right now.
I have a good friend on out art faculty who recently returned from a
round-the-world tour (literally) and is planning a show of some of her
photographs. She has digitized many of them and worked on them using
Photoshop and is having dye sub prints made. She is also having straight
photographic process prints made from some of her negatives. I have
suggested that she consider Ilfochrome prints for stability and mentioned
UV filters and some other stuff, but she doesn't want to spend the money
and is going with Kodacolor prints, no filters and any kind of matt board
so long as its cheap. She says that the prints only have to last through
the exhibition. Sorry to have caused some folks to worry over this. If
you listen to archivists they will tell you to keep your prints in the
dark, sealed in mylar, frozen at 20% relative humidity and never look at
them. On the other hand, you don't want to keep them out in the backyard
in the rain, sun and pollution. I think you have to weigh all the factors
and make an intelligent decision.
Bob Schramm