1060
in Venice, next to the San Marco tower. He became very
well-known for his professional skill, mainly for his
photographs of works of art. In 1862 he won a prize at
the International Exhibition in London with an album
of 110 albumen prints representing the miniatures of
the Grimani Breviary, a famous religious book kept in
the Marciana Library in Venice. In 1878 he published
his last work, an album of 24 albumen prints of the
miniatures of Attavante Fiorentino. In his last days he
wrote a letter to his friend Carlo Naya in favour of the
proposal by Carlo Brogi of Florence, for a law defend-
ing the intellectual and artistic rights of photographers.
He died in Treviso on 21st August 1879. His 1872
Vesuvius pictures still survive in the private Italian
collection, P. Becchetti collection, Rome, and they are
also published.
Silvia Paoli
PERMANENCY AND IMPERMANENCY
Photographs need not, of necessity, fade” wrote Robert
Hunt (1857), and “where they do fade, blame rests with
the photographer, who has not bestowed the required
care in giving them permanence... and if the pictures
are toned with gold instead of sulphur, photographs are
as permanent as water colour drawings.That statement was made at a time when the fading of
photographs had threatened to undermine the whole
future of photography. Far from being the permanent
record of nature drawing herself, photographs were
becoming seen as being as transient and temporary as
the light which originally created them.
The issue of fading was of such widespread signifi -
cance in the early 1850s, and its causes so little under-
stood, that a letter on the subject appeared in the fi rst
issue of the Journal of the Photographic Society. The
writer, identifi ed only as J.G.M., asked if
there is any known method by which a positive photo-
graph, prepared only with an ammonio-nitrate of silver
solution, may be prevented from fading, or by which
it may be revived, having faded; I have one in this lat-
ter condition taken about a year ago, and of which the
details are certainly becoming obscured, the dark parts
being much lighter.
It was done in winter, during rain, and in a much
warmer latitude than this.The assumption that the weather conditions during
the taking of the negative might have had some im-
pact on the resulting permanence or impermanence of
the print, demonstrates how limited was the average
photographer’s understanding of the chemistry involved
in photographic production.
The editor’s recommendation, that a solution of hy-
drosulphuric acid might restore the image, would have
produced only a temporary improvement. Sulphur in the
image would, in time, be identifi ed as one of the many
factors that contributed to impermanence.
Within two years of this letter appearing in print, the
Photographic Society of London, increasingly aware of
the mounting scale of the problem, established a com-
mittee of photographers and chemists to explore the
problem. Their remit was “to take into consideration
the Question of the Fading of Positive Photographic
Pictures upon paper.” The so-called “Fading Commit-
tee” chaired by Roger Fenton, was made up of many
of the eminent fi gures of the day, its work funded by a
donation from Prince Albert.
While Fenton may have held the chair, the project was
led by the eminent chemist T. F. Hardwich. The brief for
Hardwich’s team had, in effect, been established while
the salt print was pre-eminent, but the introduction of
the albumen print in the early 1850s had exacerbated the
problem. The greater concentration of chemistry within
the more impermeable structure of the albumenised sur-
face layer of the print had increased rather than reduced
the problems caused by continuing chemical reactions
after the processing cycle had been completed. Albu-
men prints were much harder to wash than salted paper
prints, and the chemistry contained within the emulsion
more complex. The methodology used by Hardwich to
determine the causes and effects—in what was the fi rst
scientifi c study of its kind—established the principles
upon which the effects of aging on photographs would
be determined for many years. His experimental meth-
odology is still held up as an exemplar.
Almost since the dawn of photography, fading had
been recognised as an issue, but not one which appeared
to affl ict all photographers equally. While Talbot and
Henneman had experienced signifi cant fading prob-
lems with many of the production runs of prints made
by Henneman at the Reading printing establishment
in the mid 1840s, prints made by Hill and Adamson in
Scotland had not exhibited such diffi culties.
There were a number of differences in the manner
in which the prints had been made. Henneman had ob-
served that the print colour was ‘improved’ as the fi xing
bath aged—due in fact to increased levels of sulphur in
the fi xer—and thus elected to fi x his prints in increas-
ingly old hypo baths. Hill and Adamson, preferring the
use of a more dilute, but always fresh, fi xer, did not
encounter the problem. While Henneman gave limited
washing to the completed prints—thus ineffi ciently
removing the complex thiosulphates from the paper
thickness—Hill and Adamson washed for up to twenty
four hours. While Henneman’s shorter wash might
have proved reasonably effective in warm weather with
warmer water, in winter with cold water it would have