A new Discovery: Unique Treasures for our Growing Archive

Recent­ly we have received a new acces­sion in Friedrichshafen from the Schmid-May­bach pri­vate col­lec­tion – an exten­sive col­lec­tion of pho­tographs, let­ters, and oth­er doc­u­ments. This trea­sure with many pic­tures, some of which have nev­er been pub­lished before, will be cat­a­loged in the com­ing weeks.

Most of the images we have received are prints made on pho­to­graph­ic paper; some are neg­a­tives. Each indi­vid­ual requires spe­cial and dif­fer­ent treat­ment to ensure that it will last longer and will be avail­able for future gen­er­a­tions. Pho­tos, when being print­ed, need chem­i­cals to devel­op the image on the paper. The pho­to­graph­ic paper is watered in a final step in the dark­room. How­ev­er, a cer­tain amount of these chem­i­cals remains and could fur­ther poten­tial­ly dam­age the image when not appro­pri­ate­ly treat­ed. There­by, it is essen­tial to use acid- free stor­age mate­ri­als and pay atten­tion to using high qual­i­ty-plas­tics (or avoid­ing them com­plete­ly). Plas­tics — if not of high qual­i­ty can emit gas­es that are poten­tial­ly dam­ag­ing to the pho­tographs. Glas­sine paper is a mate­r­i­al that ticks these box­es, which is why we fre­quent­ly use them. It is acid-free, does not emit gas­es, and also to a cer­tain degree blocks light (though this is a side effect rather). Light and high tem­per­a­tures are addi­tion­al fac­tors that need to be con­sid­ered when work­ing with old photographs.

Neg­a­tives are espe­cial­ly tricky. They con­tain the image infor­ma­tion on clear mate­r­i­al, the lat­ter being the glass in ear­ly exam­ples (some­thing we luck­i­ly have in this col­lec­tion too) or acetate. Neg­a­tives are irre­place­able orig­i­nals and con­tain much more image infor­ma­tion than an image print­ed from it. When scan­ning neg­a­tives with the appro­pri­ate scan­ner, one can pro­duce very large files with high res­o­lu­tion that allow them to print big or zoom in close­ly. While deliv­er­ing bet­ter image qual­i­ty, they are also much more fragile.

Liv­ing in the dig­i­tal age, it is essen­tial to dig­i­tize. It enables many things: to show repro­duc­tions in envi­ron­ments where the orig­i­nal could not be sit­u­at­ed, for exam­ple, due to adverse light con­di­tions and, very impor­tant­ly, allows to present the images to a glob­al audi­ence via the inter­net and on social media. In the fol­low­ing posts, we want to make use of that very aspect to present bits of the May­bach his­to­ry to a glob­al audi­ence. We will give insight into our finds, the process of dig­i­ti­za­tion, and of course the excit­ing sto­ries that con­nect our dis­cov­er­ies to the May­bach history.

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