[pure-silver] Re: b&w print has discolored
----- Original Message ----- From: "Janet Cull" <jcull@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> 
To: <pure-silver@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, March 26, 2008 8:09 PM
Subject: [pure-silver] b&w print has discolored
Tonight I picked up a print I had taken to a print competition last year. It was matted with a bit of white border showing. I re-matted it to show tomorrow night, and upon close inspection I see that in places it looks yellowish, orange-ish, and brownish. It almost looks like a bad selenium toning job, except that I don't think I'd have toned it because it's rc paper. The borders are white with no stains.
I'm rewashing it now, but rubbing my hands over it doesn't remove it so I don't think it's some surface gunk. It's a good print. Well, it was!
Should I assume it was a problem with the fixer? I have other prints I did at the same time and they look fine. I don't know how it was stored, but by the condition of the mat I know it wasn't handled as carefully as I'd have liked. (I'll say, though, it's my fault for having left it so long.) I took it in a large envelope and it was returned without any protection at all - just handed to me in the white mat, with a backing I had on it.
I've had prints go bad from exhausted fixer and from just not having been left long enough. This looks different from any of those I've seen. Maybe it's a new-to-me fixing error.
There is a brownish tint along the edge of the image on 2 sides, but not on the white border. There are other discolorations (slight) within the image, too. If it was improperly fixed, wouldn't it be discolored overall - the border too? I just walked back and put it in fixer, just in case it might help. I don't know.
I don't suppose there's anything I can do at this point, other than be more careful next time? 

Thanks.

Janet
p.s. If this fixer doesn't change it (I can hope) I'll scan it when it's dry and link to it so you can see the stains, if that will help.
If the stains follow approximately the image its most likely to be from incomplete fixing. Its very unlikely that RC paper would be inadequately washed and lack of washing tends to leave fixer in all parts of the emulsion resulting in an overall stain although it may not be uniform. Since fixer reaction products which are not soluble tend to be concentrated in the image area they will result in image staining. Much of the stain is probably silver sulfide which is, of course, what sepia toned images are made of so they look similar. The difference is that the sulfiding from fixer complexes is uncontrolled and may also result in bleaching of the image. Its also possible that this is oxidation of the image although that is more often seen as "bronzing" of the image from extremely finely devided silver on the surface of the print. Oxidation is a redox process where some of the image silver is converted to silver oxide some of which can migrate to the surface where it is converted to metallic silver again by different polutants. Sometimes this silvering out or bronzing can be removed by a mild silver bleach as is used for dichroic fog but the image will have been damaged. Re-washing inadequately washed prints does no good after a couple of weeks. The hypo and its reaction products will gradually be converted to insoluble substances. About the only thing to do is to reprint. A suitable bleach for dichroic fog or surface silver can be made by adding about 15 grams/liter to film strength acid rapid fixer. Watch the film or paper very carefully because this soluton can begin to bleach the image fairly quickly. 

---
Richard Knoppow
Los Angeles, CA, USA
dickburk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
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