Re: new alt process--gelatin silver

>>>Man oh man has the list been quiet of late, so I thought I'd share a
maddening comment made at a panel.

(Snip)

BTW, the Library of Congress has 100,000 prints in their collection. When I
asked the curator if there were any gum prints I could see, she did not know
what I was talking about. >>>

I feel your pain. I am not sure who you talked to, but, if it is who I am thinking of, this person is truly clueless. I happen to be researching archives all over the net and a surprisingly large number of "curators" do not know their business, photographic history, or the facts any well schooled (old schools to be sure) person likely knows. I have asked about many techniques and few actually know much at all.

I have been researching subjects like the Polaroid Vectograph Process, Dye Transfer/Wash Off Relief, Dufaycolor, Chromatone, Colorstill, and the like. Sad to say, few know that at one time, Kodachrome sheet film existed in sizes up to and including 11x14 inches and at one time, Kodak offered Kodachrome prints produced by coating Kodachrome emulsion on an opal plastic substrate. Where have the thousands of Kodachrome prints gone? Not available in many collections, I can tell you that. What happened to the scores of Minicolor and Kotavachrome (NOT Kodachrome, mind you. No typo here) prints?

The George Eastman House is not much better. I am still in an argument regarding some of the images in my collection. The GEH seems to think I am misidentifying my personal collection because "Kodak never offered what you think you have." I would like to refer them to Kodak's old catalogs and advertising collections, but apparently, they no longer exist. Want to buy (LOL ... not for sale) the 6 foot by 8 foot black and white Kodak print framed in a solid maple frame that is shown on the cover of Kodak's "Photography with Large Format Cameras" dataguide? The museums do not know they were once offered to dealers; most certainly, never sold to customers.

I suppose what I should ask this group is how far back should the knowledge go? How utterly obscure should a photographic print or image be, before the "expert" or collection curator can be forgiven for not knowing anything about the image? Also, what has happened to collections of these not often seen materials? Obscure products interest me, so perhaps I am expecting "everyone" to know. I do indeed wonder why I seem to have one of the only complete collections of Kodak Dealer Coloramas. According to "Kodak" Coloramas were never made small and certainly never offered to collectors. One person at Kodak told me they have no repository of information, despite the rather wonderful dedicated Colorama History web site on Kodak's servers.

I would expect the curator of a large and varied collection of photographic history to actually know something about the history. So very, very, sad.

Bob
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Received on Thu Apr 7 08:42:58 2005