POLAROID ™ INSTANT COLOR PHOTOGRAPH: DEGRADATIONS AND CONSERVATION

By Joan Pifarré, curator and restorer of photographic heritage

Monday, November 8, 2021 at 6:30 p.m.

Cercle Artístic de Sant Lluc, Mercaders Street, 42, Barcelona.

You can also access the fototertulia from this link (the session will be recorded on video): https://meet.jit.si/FTT_2021

Comparative image of the result of the effects of sunlight after 30 days. Photo: Joan Pifarré

In the 1940s, Edwin H. Land revolutionized the world of photography by introducing on the market a photographic material capable of developing and fixing the image in a few seconds, without the need to go to a laboratory.

This type of photography became a mass phenomenon in the seventies due to its simplicity, multiplying the practice of photography in the domestic and scientific environment; becoming a cultural icon, by which great artists were seduced. Today, the peculiarities of instant photography continue to influence society. This is evidenced, among others, by nostalgia for the past and the rise of retro fashion.

Unfortunately, snapshots are objects of a very fragile nature and are subject to a wide variety of deterioration due to their intrinsic characteristics, which continuously interact with the environment and with themselves. This has been corroborated by the different experimental tests that have been carried out and which have resulted in light being a crucial agent and that different factors must also be taken into account, such as exposure time and wavelength and temperature. radiation intensity. The photographs show notable physical-chemical transformations in extreme situations of temperature and relative humidity and that each time a Polaroid ™ is handled, a series of small physical damages can be caused. For this reason, a good preventive conservation is necessary to avoid the degradation, disappearance or destruction of the image.